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LIVES 



SIR MATTHEW HALE 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER, 



BY GILBERT BURNET, D.D. 



LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY. 




LONDON : 
WILLIAM PICKERING 

3IDCCCXXIX- 



./^3B9 



PRINTED BY S. AND R BENTLEY, 

Dorset Street, Fleet Street. 



PREFACE. 

To a new edition of a work tliat has 
received the approbation of the public for 
more than a century, and which still retains 
its popularity, it would be impertinent to pre- 
fix any recommendatory observations. The 
only superiority which the present impression 
claims, consists in the accuracy of the text, 
and in its typographical neatness : to the 
life of Hale, however, a correct list of his 
publications has been added. 

Few pieces of biography are so interesting 
as the Memoirs of Sir Matthew Hale and 
the Earl of Rochester. Their lives form a 
striking contrast, and are admirably calcu- 
lated to enforce the lessons of the moralist. 
In Hale, we contemplate a man rising from 
obscurity to distinction by the exertion of his 
own talents; dignifying by his virtues the 



IV PREIACE. 

elevated station which he attained ; and^ 
from a firm reliance on the truths of Revela- 
tion, closing a long and honourable life with- 
out regret for the past, or fears for the fu- 
ture. In Rochester, a person born to the 
highest honours and possessed of a splendid 
fortune, disgracing the one and squandering 
the other, by a career of uninterrupted vice : 
a professed atheist, and the scoffer at every 
thing that is sacred and good ; prostituting 
the finest talents to the worst purposes; and, 
with a mind as diseased as his body, termi- 
nating a short and disgraceful existence on a 
death-bed of agony and terror ; an object of 
compassion to the virtuous,-- a beacon to the 
profligate and wicked. 

The touching simplicity with which their 
stories are told by Bishop Burnet, accounts 
for the esteem in which they are held as 
compositions; whilst the practical inferences 
which he draws, the unaffected tone of piety 
that is every where conspicuous, and the fact, 
that he is not only the biographer of the un- 
fortunate Rochester, but was the divine who 



PREFACE. V 

Soothed the remorse with which he was at 
length visited, and brightened his last mo- 
ments by teaching hirn to hope beyond the 
grave, impart to his narrative an interest 
which has seldom been exceeded; and render 
these Memoirs the most instructive and de- 
lightful, that have ever been written. 
October 20, 1828. 



THE PREFACE. 



No part of history is more instructive and 
delighting than the lives of great and worthy 
men : the shortness of them invites many 
readers, and there are such little and yet re- 
markable passages in them, too inconsiderable 
to be put in a general history of the age in 
which they lived, that all people are very de- 
sirous to know them. This makes Plutarch's 
Lives be more generally read than any of all 
the books which the ancient Greeks or Romans 
wrote. 

But the lives of heroes and princes are 
commonly filled with the account of the great 
things done by them, w^hich do rather belong 
to a general, than a particular history ; and 
do rather amuse the reader's fancy with a 
splendid show of greatness, than offer him 
what is really so useful to himself. And^ in- 
deed, the lives of princes are either written 
with so much flattery, by those who intended 
to merit by it at their own hands, or others 
concerned in them ; or with so much spite, by 
those who, being ill used by them, have re- 



2 PREFACE. 

venged themselves on their memory ; that 
there is not much to be built on them. And 
though the ill nature of many makes what is 
satirically written to be generally more read 
and believed, than when the flattery is visible 
and coarse, yet certainly resentment may 
make the writer corrupt the truth of history, 
as much as interest. And since all men have 
their blind sides, and commit errors, he that 
will industriously lay these together, leaving 
out, or but slightly touching what should be 
set against them to balance them, may make 
a very good man appear in very bad colours. 
So, upon the whole matter, there is not that 
reason to expect either much truth, or great 
instruction, from what is written concerning 
heroes or princes ; for few have been able to 
imitate the patterns Suetonius set the world 
in writing the Lives of the Roman Emperors 
with the same freedom that they had led them. 
But the lives of private men, though they sel- 
dom entertain the reader with such a variety 
of passages as the other do, yet certainly 
they offer him things that are more imitable, 
and do present wisdom and virtue to him, not 
only in a fair idea, which is often looked on 
as a piece of the invention or fancy of the 
writer, but in such plain and familiar instances 
as do both direct him better, and persuade 



PREFACE. 3 

him more ; and there are not such tempta- 
tions to bias those who write them, so that we 
may generally depend more on the truth of 
such relations as are given in them. 

In the age in which we live, religion and 
virtue have been proposed and defended with 
such advantages, with that great force of rea- 
son, and those persuasions, that they can 
hardly be matched in former times ; yet, after 
all this, there are but few much wrought on 
by them, which perhaps flows from this, among 
other reasons, that there are not so many ex- 
cellent patterns set out, as might, both in a 
shorter and more effectual manner, recom- 
mend that to the world which discourses do 
but coldly ; the wit and style of the writer 
being more considered than the argument 
which they handle; and therefore the pro- 
posing virtue and religion in such a model, 
may perhaps operate more than the perspec- 
tive of it can do ; and for the history of learn- 
ing, nothing does so preserve and improve it 
as the writing the lives of those who have been 
eminent in it. 

There is no book the ancients have left us 
which might have informed us more than Dio- 
genes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers, if 
he had had the art of writing equal to that 
great subject which he undertook ; for if he 



4 PREFACE. 

had given the world such an account of them 
as Gassendus has done of Peiresk, how great a 
stock of knowledge might we have had, which 
by his unskilfulness is in a great measure lost, 
since we must now depend only on him, be- 
cause we have no other or better author that 
has written on that argument. 

For many ages there were no lives written 
but by monks, through whose writings there 
runs such an incurable humour of telling in- 
credible and inimitable passages^ that little in 
them can be believed or proposed as a pat- 
tern : Sulpitius Severus, and Jerome, showed 
too much credulity in the lives they wrote, 
and raised Martin and Hilarion beyond what 
can be reasonably believed ; after them, So- 
crates, Theodoret, Sozomen, and Pall^dius 
took a pleasure to tell uncouth stories of the 
monks of Thebais, and Nitria ; and those 
who came after them scorned to fail short of 
them, but raised their saints above those of 
former ages, so that one would have thought 
that indecent way of writing could rise no 
higher; and this humour infected even those 
who had otherwise a good sense of things, 
and a just apprehension of mankind, as may 
appear in Matthew Paris, who though he was 
a writer of great judgment and fidelity, yet 
he has corrupted his history with much of 



PREFACE. b 

that alloy. But when emulation and envy 
arose among the several orders or houses, 
then they improved in that art of making ro- 
mances, instead of writing lives, to that pitch, 
that the world became generally much scan- 
dalized with them. The Franciscans and Do- 
minicans tried who could say the most extra- 
vagant things of the founders, or other saints, 
of their orders ; and the Benedictines, who 
thought themselves possessed of the belief of 
the world, as well as of its wealth, endeavoured 
all that was possible still to keep up the dig- 
nity of their order, by outlying the others all 
they could ; and whereas here or there a mi- 
racle, a vision, or trance, might have occurred 
in the lives of former saints, now every page 
was full of those wonderful things. 

Nor has the humour of writing in such a 
manner been quite laid down in this age, 
though more awakened and better enlighten- 
ed, as appears in the Life of Philip Nerius, 
and a great many more. And the Jesuits at 
Antwerp are now taking care to load the world 
with a vast and voluminous collection of all 
those lives, that has already swelled to eleven 
volumes in folio, in a small print, and yet 
being digested according to the calendar, they 
have yet but ended the month of April. The 
Life of Monsieur Renty is written in another 
B 3 



6 PKEFACE. 

manner, where there are so many excellent 
passages, that he is justly to be reckoned 
amongst the greatest patterns that France has 
afforded in this age. 

But whilst some have nourished infidelity, 
and a scorn of all sacred things, by writing of 
those good men in such a strain, as makes not 
only what is so related to be disbelieved, but 
creates a distrust of the authentic writings of 
our most holy faith ; others have fallen into 
another extreme in writing lives too jejunely, 
swelling them up with trifling accounts of the 
childhood and education, and the domestic 
or private affairs of those persons of whom 
they write, in which the world is little con- 
cerned ; by these they become so flat, that 
few care to read them, for certainly those 
transactions are only fit to be delivered to 
posterity that may carry with them some use- 
ful piece of knowledge to after-times. 

I have now an argument before me, which 
will afford indeed only a short history, but will 
contain in it as great a character, as perhaps 
can be given of any in this age, since there 
are few instances of more knowledge and 
greater virtues meeting in one person. I am 
upon one account, besides many more, unfit to 
undertake it, because I was not at all known 
to him, so I can say nothing from my own 



PREFACE, r 

observation ; but upon second thoughts I do 
not know whether this may not qualify me to 
write more impartially, though perhaps more 
defectively ; for the knowledge of extraordi- 
nary persons does most commonly bias those 
who were much v/rought on by the tenderness 
of their friendship for them, to raise their 
style a little too high w^hen they write con- 
cerning them. I confess I knew him as much 
as the looking often upon him could amount 
to. The last year of his being in London, 
he came always on Sundays, when he could 
go abroad, to the chapel of the Rolls, where 
I then preached : In my life I never saw so 
much gravity, tempered with that sweetness, 
and set off with so much vivacity, as appear- 
ed in his looks and behaviour, which disposed 
me to a veneration for him, which I never had 
for any with whom I was not acquainted. I 
was seeking an opportunity of being admitted 
to his conversation ; but I understood that, 
between a great want of health, and a mul- 
tiplicity of business, which his employment 
brought upon him, he was master of so little 
of his time, that 1 stood in doubt whether T 
might presume to rob him of any of it ; and 
so he left the town before I could resolve on 
desiring to be known to him. 

My ignorance of the law of England made 



8 PREFACE. 

me also unfit to write of a marij a great part 
of whose character, as to his learning, is to 
be taken from his skill in the common law, 
and his performance in that. But I shall leave 
that to those of the same robe ; since if I en- 
gaged much in it, I must needs commit many 
errors, writing of a subject that is foreign to 
me. 

The occasion of my undertaking this was 
given me by the earnest desires of some that 
have great power over me, who, having been 
much obliged by him, and holding his memory 
in high estimation, thought I might do it 
some right by writing his life ; I was then en- 
gaged in the History of the Reformation, so I 
promised that, as soon as that was over, I 
would make the best use I could of such 
informations and memorials as should be 
brought me. 

This I have now performed in the best man- 
ner I could, and have brought into method all 
the parcels of his life, or the branches of his 
character, which I could either gather from 
the informations that were brought me, or 
from those that were familiarly acquainted 
with him, or from his writings. 1 have not 
applied any of the false colours with which 
art, or some forced eloquence might furnish 
me in writing concerning him ; but have en- 



PREFACE. 9 

deavoured to set him out in the same simpli- 
city in which he lived. I have said little of 
his domestic concerns, since though in these 
he was a great example, yet it signifies no- 
thing to the world, to know any particular 
exercises that might be given to his patience, 
and therefore I shall draw a veil over all these, 
and shall avoid saying any thing of him but 
what may afford the reader some profitable 
instruction. I am under no temptations of 
saying any thing but what I am persuaded is 
exactly true ; for where there is so much ex- 
cellent truth to be told, it were an inexcusable 
fault to corrupt that, or prejudice the reader 
against it by the mixture of falsehoods with it. 
In short, as he was a great example while 
he lived, so I wish the setting him thus out 
to posterity, in his own true and native co- 
lours, may have its due influence on all per- 
sons, but more particularly on those of that 
profession whom it more immediately con- 
cerns, whether on the bench or at the bar. 



THE 



LIFE 



OF 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 



Matthew Hale was born at Alderley in 
Gloucestershire, the 1st of November, 1G09. 
His grandfather was Robert Hale, an eminent 
clothier at Wotton-under-Edge, in that coun- 
ty, where he and his ancestors had lived for 
many descents ; and they had given several 
parcels of land for the use of the poor, which 
are enjoyed by them to this day. This Ro- 
bert acquired an estate of ten thousand 
pounds, which he divided almost equally 
amongst his five sons, besides the portions 
he gave his daughters, from whom a nume- 
rous posterity has sprung. His second son 
was Robert Hale, a barrister of Lincoln's-inn; 
he married Joan, the daughter of Matthew 
Poyntz, of Alderley, Esq. who was descended 



iZ THE LIFE OF 

from that noble family of the Poyntz's of Ac- 
ton : of this marriage there was no other issue 
but this one son. His grandfather, by his 
mother, was his godfather, and gave him his 
own name at his baptism. His father was a 
man of that strictness ef conscience, that he 
gave over the practice of the law, because he 
could not understand the reason of giving co- 
lour in pleadings, which, as he thought, was 
to tell a lie ; and that, with some other things 
commonly practised, seemed to him contrary 
to that exactness of truth and justice which 
became a Christian ; so that he withdrew 
himself from the inns of court to live on his 
estate in the country. Of this I was inform- 
ed by an ancient gentleman that lived in a 
friendship with his son for fifty years, and he 
heard Judge Jones, who was Mr. Hale's con- 
temporary, declare this in the King's Bench. 
But as the care he had to save his soul made 
him abandon a profession in which he might 
have raised his family much higher, so his 
charity to his poor neighbours made him not 
only deal his alms largely among them while 
he lived, but at his death, in 1614^ he left 
out of his small estate, which was but 100/. 
a year, 20/. a-year to the poor of Wotton, 
which his son confirmed to them with some 
addition, and with this regulation, that it 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 13 

should be distributed among such poor house- 
keepers as did not receive the alms of the 
parish ; for to give it to those, was only, as 
he used to say, to save so much money to 
the rich, who by law were bound to relieve 
the poor of the parish. 

Thus he was descended rather from a good 
than a noble family, and yet what was want- 
ing in the insignificant titles of high birth 
and noble blood, was more than made up in 
the true worth of his ancestors. But he was 
soon deprived of the happiness of his father's 
care and instruction, for as he lost his mother 
before he was three years old, so his father 
died before he was five ; so early w^as he cast 
on the providence of God. But that unhap- 
piness was in a great measure made up to 
him ; for after some opposition made by Mr. 
Thomas Poyntz, his uncle by his mother, he 
was committed to the care of Anthony King- 
scot, of Kingscot, Esq. who was his next 
kinsman after his uncles by his mother. 

Great care was taken of his education, and 
bis guardian intended to breed him to be a 
divine, and being inclined to the way of those 
then called Puritans, put him to some schools 
that were taught by those of that party, and 
in 1626, in the seventeenth year of his age, 
sent him to Magdalen Hall in Oxford, where 
c 



14 THE LIFE OF 

Obadiah Sedgwick was his tutor. He was 
an extraordinary proficient at school, and for 
some time at Oxford ; but the stage-players 
coming thither, he was so much corrupted 
by seeing many plays, that he almost wholly 
forsook his studies. By this he not only lost 
much time, but found that his head came to 
be thereby filled with such vain images of 
things, that they were at best unprofitable, if 
not hurtful to him; and being afterwards 
sensible of the mischief of this, he resolved, 
upon his coming to London, where he knew 
the opportunities of such sights would be 
more frequent and inviting, never to see a 
play again, to which he constantly adhered. 

The corruption of a young man's mind in 
one particular, generally draws on a great 
many more after it ; so he being now taken 
off from following his studies, and from the 
gravity of his deportment, that was formerly 
eminent in him, far beyond his years, set 
himself to many of the vanities incident to 
youth, but still preserved his purity, and a 
great probity of mind. He loved fine clothes, 
and delighted much in company ; and being 
of a strong, robust body, he was a great mas- 
ter at all those exercises that required much 
strength. He also learned to fence, and 
handle his weapons, in which he became so 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 15 

expert, that he worsted many of the masters 
of those arts : but as he was exercising him- 
self in them, an instance appeared that show- 
ed a good judgment, and gave some hopes of 
better things. One of his masters told him 
he could teach him no more, for he was now 
better at his own trade than himself was. 
This Mr. Hale looked on as flattery ; so, to 
make the master discover himself, he pro- 
mised him the house he lived in, for he was 
his tenant, if he could hit him a blow on the 
head ; and bade him do his best, for he 
would be as good as his word : so after a lit- 
tle engagement, his master, being really supe- 
rior to him, hit him on the head, and he per- 
formed his promise, for he gave him the 
house freely; and was not unwilling at that 
rate to learn so early to distinguish flattery 
from plain and simple truth. 

He was now so taken up with martial mat- 
ters, that, instead of going on in his design 
of being a scholar or a divine, he resolved to 
be a soldier ; and his tutor Sedgwick going 
into the Low Countries, chaplain to the re- 
nowned Lord Vere, he resolved to go along 
with him, and to trail a pike in the Prince of 
Orange's army ; but a happy stop was put to 
this resolution, which might have proved so 
fatal to himself, and have deprived the age 



16 THE LIFE OF 

of the great example he gave, and the useful 
services he afterwards did his country. He 
was engaged in a suit of law with Sir Wil- 
liam WhitmorCj who laid claim to some part 
of his estate ; and his guardian being a man 
of a retired temper, and not made for busi- 
ness, he was forced to leave the university, 
after he had been three years in it, and go 
to London to solicit his own business, being 
recommended to Serjeant Glanvil for his 
counsellor; and he, observing in him a clear 
apprehension of things, and a solid judgment, 
and a great fitness for the study of the 
law, took pains upon him to persuade him to 
forsake his thoughts of being a soldier, and 
to apply himself to the study of the law : and 
this had so good an effect on him, that on 
the 8th of November, 1629, when he w^as 
past the twentieth year of his age, he was 
admitted into Lincoln's-inn ; and being then 
deeply sensible how much time he had lost, 
and that idle and vain things had overrun 
and almost corrupted his mind, he resolved 
to redeem the time he had lost, and followed 
his studies with a diligence that could scarce- 
ly be believed, if the signal effects of it did 
not gain it credit. He studied for many 
years at the rate of sixteen hours a-day : he 
threw aside all fine clothes, and betook him- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 17 

self to a plain fashion, which he continued 
to use, in many points, to his dying day. 

But since the honour of reclaiming him 
from the idleness of his former course of life 
is due to the memory of that eminent lawyer 
Serjeant Glanvil, and since my design in 
writing is to propose a pattern of heroic vir- 
tue to the world, I shall mention one passage 
of the Serjeant which ought never to be for- 
gotten , His father had a fair estate, which 
he intended to settle on his elder brother; 
but he being a vicious young man, and there 
appearing no hopes of his recovery, he set- 
tled it on him, that was his second son. 
Upon his death, his eldest son, finding that 
what he had before looked on as the threat- 
enings of an angry father, was now but too 
certain, became melancholy, and that by de- 
grees wrought so great a change on him, that 
what his father could not prevail in while he 
lived, was now effected by the severity of his 
last will, so that it was now too late for him 
to change in hopes of an estate that was 
gone from him. But his brother, observing 
the reality of the change, resolved within 
himself what to do : so he called him with 
many of his friends together to a feast, and 
after other dishes had been served up to the 
dinner, he ordered one that was covered to 
c 3 



18 THE LIFE OF 

be set before his brother, and desired him to 
uncover it ; which he doing, the company 
was surprised to find it full of writings. So 
he told them, that he was now to do what he 
was sure his father would have done, if he 
had lived to see that happy change which 
they now all saw in his brother ; and there- 
fore he freely restored to him the whole 
estate. This is so great an instance of a ge- 
nerous and just disposition, that I hope the 
reader will easily pardon this digression, and 
that the rather si ace that worthy serjeant 
was so instrumental in the happy change 
that followed in the course of Mr. Hale's 
life. 

Yet he did not at first break off from keep- 
ing too much company with some vain peo- 
ple, till a sad accident drove him from it ; 
for he, with some other young students, being 
invited to be merry out of town, one of the 
company called for so much wine, that not- 
withstanding all that Mr. Hale could do to 
prevent it, he went on in his excess till he fell 
down as dead before them^ so that all that 
were present were not a little affrighted at it, 
who did what they could to bring him to him- 
self again. This did particularly affect Mr. 
Hale, who thereupon went into another room, 
and, shutting the door, fell on his knees, and 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 19 

prayed earnestly to God, both for his friend 
that he might be restored to life again, and 
that himself might be forgiven for giviag 
such countenance to so much excess : and 
he vowed to God, that he would never again 
keep company in that manner, nor drink a 
health while he lived. His friend recovered, 
and he most religiously observed his vow till 
his dying day. And though he was afterwards 
pressed to drink healths, particularly the 
King's, which was set up by too many as a 
distinguishing mark of loyalty, and drew many 
into great excess after his majesty's happy 
restoration ; yet he would never dispense with 
his vow, though he was sometimes roughly 
treated for this, which some hot and indiscreet 
men called obstinacy. 

This wrought an entire change on him. Now 
he forsook all vain company, and divided him- 
self between the duties of religion and the stu- 
dies of his profession ; in the former he was so 
regular, that for six and thirty years' time he 
never once failed going to church on the 
Lord's-day : this observation he made when 
an ague first interrupted that constant course; 
and he reflected on it, as an acknowledgment 
of God's great goodness to him, in so long a 
continuance of his health. 

He took a strict account of his time, of 



20 THE LIFE OF 

which the reader will best judge by the scheme 
he drew for a diary, which I shall insert copied 
from the original ; but I am not certain when 
he made it. It is set down in the same simpli- 
city in which he wrote it for his own private use. 

MORNING, 

L To lift up the heart to God in thankful- 
ness for renewing my life. 

II. To renew my covenant with God in Christ. 

1. By renewed acts of faith receiving 
Christ, and rejoicing in the height of 
that relation. 2. Resolution of being- 
one of his people, doing him allegi- 
ance. 

III. Adoration and prayer. 

IV. Setting a watch over my own infirmities 

and passions, over the snares laid in our 
way. Perimus Ileitis. 

DAY EMPLOYMENT. 

There must be an employment, two kinds. 

I. Our ordinary calling, to serve God in it. 

It is a service to Christ, though never so 
mean — Coloss. 3. Here faithfulness, dili- 
gence, cheerfulness. Not to overlay my- 
self with more business than I can bear. 

II. Our spiritual employments : mingle some- 

what of God's immediate service in this 
day. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 21 

REFRESHMENTS. 

I. Meat and drink, moderation seasoned 

with somewhat of God. 

II. Recreations. 1. Not our business. 

2, Suitable. No ^ames, if given to 
covetousness or passion. 

IF ALONE. 

I, Beware of wandering, vain, lustful 
thoughts ; fly from thyself rather than 
entertain these. 

II. Let thy solitary thoughts be profitable ; 
view the evidences of thy salvation, the 
state of thy soul, the coming of Christ, thy 
own mortality, it will make thee humble 
and watchful. 

COMPANY. 

Do good to them. Use God's name reverent- 
ly. Beware of leaving an ill impression of 
ill example. Receive good from them, if 
more knowing. 

EVENING, 

Cast up the accounts of the day. If aught 
amiss, beg pardon. Gather resolution of 
more vigilance. If well, bless the mercy 
and grace of God that hath supported thee. 

These notes have an imperfection in the 
wording of them, which shows they were only 
intended for his privacies. No wonder a man 



22 THE LIFE OF 

who set such rules to himself, became quickly- 
very eminent and remarkable. 

Noy, the attorney-general, being then one 
of the greatest men of the profession, took 
early notice of him, and called often for him, 
and directed him in his study, and grew to 
have such friendship for him, that he came to 
be called '' Young Noy/' He, passing from 
the extreme of vanity in his apparel, to that 
of neglecting himself too much, was once 
taken when there was a press for the king's 
service, as a fit person for it ; for he was a 
strong and well-built man. But some that 
knew him coming by, and giving notice who 
he was, the press-men let him go. This made 
him return to more decency in his clothes, but 
never to any superfluity or vanity in them. 

Once, as he was buying some cloth for a 
new suit, the draper with whom he differed 
about the price, told him he should have it for 
nothing, if he would promise him a hundred 
pounds when he came to be lord chief justice 
of England ; to which he answered, *'That he 
could not with a good conscience wear any 
man's cloth unless he paid for it ;'' so he satis- 
fied the draper, and carried away the cloth. 
Yet that same draper lived to see him ad- 
vanced to that same dignity. 

While he was thus improving himself in the 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 23 

study of the law, he not only kept the hours 
of the hall constantly in term-time, but seldom 
put himself out of commons in vacation-time, 
and continued then to follow his studies with 
an unwearied diligence; and, not being satis- 
fied with the books written about it, or to take 
things upon trust, was very diligent in search- 
ing all records. Then did he make divers 
collections out of the books he had read, and, 
mixing them with his own observations, di- 
gested them into a common- place book; 
which he did with so much industry and judg- 
ment, that an eminent judge of the King's 
Bench borrowed it of him when he was lord 
chief baron. He unwillingly lent it, because 
it had been written by him before he w^as 
called to the bar, and had never been tho- 
roughly revised by him since that time ; only 
what alterations had been made in the law 
by subsequent statutes and judgments, were 
added by him as they had happened ; but the 
judge having perused it said, that though it 
was composed by him so early, he did not think 
any lawyer in England could do it better, ex- 
cept he himself would again set about it. 

He was soon found out by that great and 
learned antiquary Mr. Selden, who, though 
much superior to him in years, yet came to 
have such a liking of him, and of Mr. Vaughan 



24 THE LIFE OF 

who was afterwards lord chief justice of the 
Common Pleas, that as he continued in a close 
friendship with them while he lived, so he left 
them, at his death, two of his four executors. 

It was this acquaintance that first set Mr. 
Hale on a more enlarged pursuit of learning, 
which he had before confined to his own pro- 
fession ; but, becoming as great a master in it 
as ever any was very soon, he who could never 
let any of his time go away unprofitably, 
found leisure to attain to as great a variety of 
knowledge in as comprehensive a manner as 
most men have done in any age. 

He set himself much to the study of the 
Roman law, and though he liked the way of 
judicature in England by juries much better 
than that of the civil law, where so much wa» 
trusted to the judge, yet he often said, that 
the true grounds and reasons of law were so 
well delivered in the Digests, that a man could 
never understand law as a science so well as 
by seeking it there, and therefore lamented 
much that it was so little studied in England. 

He looked on readiness in arithmetic as a 
thing which might be useful to him in his 
own employment ; and acquired it to such a 
degree, that he would often on a sudden, and 
afterwards on the Bench, resolve very hard 
questions, which had puzzled the best account- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 25 

ants about town. He rested not here, but 
studied the algebra both speciosa and nume- 
rosa, and weat through all the other mathe- 
matical sciences^ and made a great collection 
of very excellent instruments, sparing no cost 
to have them as exact as art could make 
them. He was also very conversant in philo- 
sophical learning, and in all the curious expe- 
riments and rare discoveries of this ao;e : and 
had the new books written on those subjects 
sent him from all parts, which he both read 
and examined so critically, that if the prin- 
ciples and hypotheses which he took first up 
did any way prepossess him : yet those who 
have differed most from him have acknow- 
ledged, that in what he has written concern- 
ing the Torricellian experiment, and of the 
rarefaction and condensation of the air, he 
shows as great an exactness, and as much 
subtilty in the reasoning he builds on them, 
as those principles to which he adhered could 
bear. But indeed it will seem scarcely credi- 
ble, that a man so much employed, and of so 
severe a temper of mind, could find leisure to 
read, observe, and write so much of these sub- 
jects as he did. He called them his diversions ; 
for he often said, w4ien he was weary with 
the study of the law or divinity, he used to re- 
create himself with philosophy or the mathe- 

D 



26 THE LIFE OF 

matics. To these he added great skill in 
physic, anatomy, and chirurgery. And he 
used to say, no man could be absolutely a 
master in any profession, without having some 
skill in other sciences ; for besides the satis- 
faction he had in the knowledge of these 
things, he made use of them often in his em- 
ployments. In some examinations he would 
put such questions to physicians or chirur- 
geons, that they have professed the Col- 
lege of Physicians could not do it more 
exactly; by which he discovered great judg- 
ment as well as much knowledge in these 
things. And in his sickness he used to argue 
with his doctors about his distempers, and the 
methods they took with them, like one of 
their own profession ; which one of them 
told me he understood as far as speculation 
without practice could carry him. 

To this he added great searches into ancient 
history, and particularly into the roughest and 
least delightful part of it, chronology. He 
was well acquainted with the ancient Greek 
philosophers, but want of occasion to use it 
wore out his knowledge of the Greek tongue ; 
and though he never studied the Hebrew 
tongue, yet by his great conversation with 
Selden, he understood the most curious things 
in the Rabbinical learning. 



Slil MATTHEW HALE. 27 

But above all these, he seemed to have made 
the study of divinity the chief of all others, to 
which he not only directed every thing else, 
but also arrived at that pitch in it, that those 
who have read what he has written on these 
subjects, will think they must have had most 
of his time and thoughts. It may seem ex- 
travagant, and almost incredible, that one 
man in no great compass of years should 
have acquired such a variety of knowledge, 
and that in sciences that require much leisure 
and application. But as his parts were quick 
and his apprehensions lively, his memory 
great and his judgments strong, so his in- 
dustry was almost indefatigable. He rose 
always betimes in the morning, was never idle, 
scarcely ever held any discourse about news, 
except with some few in whom he confided 
entirely. He entered into no correspondence 
by letters, except about necessary business, 
or matters of learning, and spent very little 
time in eating and drinking ; for as he never 
went to public feasts, so he gave no entertain- 
ments but to the poor ; for he followed our 
Saviour's direction, of feasting none but these, 
literally : and in eating and drinking, he ob- 
served not only great plainness and modera- 
tion, but lived so philosophically, that he 
always ended his meal with an appetite ; so 



28 THE LIFE OF 

that he lost little time at it (that being the 
only portion which he grudged himself), and 
was disposed to any exercise of his mind to 
which he thought fit to apply himself, imme- 
diately after he had dined. By these means 
he gained much time, that is otherwise unpro- 
fitably wasted. 

He had also an admirable equality in the 
temper of his mind, which disposed him for 
whatever studies he thought fit to turn himself 
to ; and some very uneasy things which he 
lay under for many years, did rather engage 
him to, than distract him from his studies. 

When he was called to the bar, and began 
to make a figure in the world, the late un- 
happy wars broke out, in which it was no easy 
thing for a man to preserve his integrity, and 
to live securely, free from great danger and 
trouble. He had read the life of Pomponius 
Atticus, written by Nepos ; and having ob- 
served, that he had passed through a time of 
as much distraction, as ever was in any age 
or state, from the wars of Marius and Sylia 
to the beginnings of Augustus's reign, without 
the least blemish on his reputation, and free 
from any considerable danger, being held in 
great esteem by all parties, and courted and 
favoured by them, he set him as a pattern to 
himself: and observing, that, besides those 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 29 

virtues which are necessary to all men, and at 
all times, there were two things that chiefly 
preserved Atticus ; the one was his engaging 
in no faction, and meddling in no public busi- 
ness ; the other was his constant favouring and 
relieving those that were lowest, which was 
ascribed by such as prevailed to the genero- 
sity of his temper, and procured him much 
kindness from those on whom he had exer- 
cised his bounty, when it came to their turn 
to govern ; he resolved to guide himself by 
those rules as much as was possible for him 
to do. 

He not only avoided all public employment, 
but the very talking of news, and was always 
both favourable and charitable to those who 
were depressed, and was sure never to provoke 
any in particular, by censuring or reflecting on 
their actions ; for many that have conversed 
much with him, have told me they never heard 
him once speak ill of any person. 

He was employed in his practice by all the 
king's party : he was assigned counsel to the 
Earl of Strafford, and Archbishop Laud, and 
afterwards to the blessed King himself, when 
brought to the infamous pageantry of a mock- 
trial, and offered to plead for him with all the 
courage that so glorious a cause ought to 
have inspired him with, but was not suffered 
D 3 



30 . THE LllK OF 

to appear, because, the King refusing, as he 
had good reason, to submit to the court, it 
was pretended none could be admitted to 
speak for him. He was also counsel for the 
Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, and 
the Lord Capel: his plea for the former of 
these I have published in the memoirs of that 
duke's life. Afterwards also being counsel for 
the Lord Craven, he pleaded with that force 
of argument, that the then attorney-general 
threatened him for appearing against the 
government : to whom he answered, he was 
pleading in defence of those laws which they 
declared they would maintain and preserve, 
and he was doing his duty to his client, so 
that he was not to be daunted with threat- 
enings. 

Upon ail these occasions he had discharged 
himself with so much learning, fidelity, and 
courage, that he came to be generally em- 
ployed for all that party ; nor was he satisfied 
to appear for their just defence in the way of 
his profession, but he also relieved them often 
in their necessities ; which he did in a way 
that was no less prudent than charitable, 
considering the dangers of that time : for he 
did often deposit considerable sums in the 
hands of a worthy gentleman of the king's 
party, who knew their necessities well, and 



sill MATTHEW HALE. Si 

was to distribute his charity according to his 
own discretion, without either letting them 
know from whence it came, or giving himself 
any account to whom he had given it. 

Cromwell seeing him possessed of so much 
practice, and he being one of the most emi- 
nent men of the law, who was not at all afraid 
of doing his duty in those critical times, re- 
solved to take him off from it, and raise him 
to the bench. 

Mr. Hale saw well enough the snare laid 
for him, and though he did not much consider 
the prejudice it would be to himself, to ex- 
change the easy and safer profits he had by 
his practice, for a judge's place in the Com- 
mon Pleas, which he was required to accept 
of, yet he did deliberate more on the lawful- 
ness of taking a commission from usurpers ; 
but, having considered well of this, he came 
to be of opinion, that it being absolutely ne- 
cessary to have justice and property kept up 
at all times, it was no sin to take a commis- 
sion from usurpers, if he made no declaration 
of his acknowledging their authority, which 
he never did : he was much urged to accept 
of it by some eminent men of his own profes^ 
sion, who were of the king's party, as Sir 
Orlando Bridgeman, and Sir Geoffrey Palmer ; 
and was also satisfied concerning the lawful- 



52 THE LIFE OF 

ness of it, by the resolution of some famous 
divines, in particular Dr. Sheldon, and Dr. 
Henchman, who were afterwards promoted to 
the sees of Canterbury and London. 

To these were added the importunities of 
all his friends, who thought that, in a time of 
so much danger and oppression, it might be 
no small security to the nation, to have a man 
of his integrity and abilities on the bench : 
and the usurpers themselves held him in that 
estimation, that they were glad to have him 
give a countenance to their courts ; and, by 
promoting one that was known to have differ- 
ent principles from them, affected the reputa- 
tion of honouring and trusting men of emi- 
nent virtues, of what persuasion soever they 
might be in relation to public matters. 

But he had greater scruples concerning the 
proceeding against felons, and putting offend- 
ers to death by that commission, since he 
thought, the sword of justice belonging only 
by right to the lawful prince, it seemed not 
warrantable to proceed to a capital sentence 
by an authority derived from usurpers ; yet 
at first he made distinction between common 
and ordinary felonies, and offences against 
the state : for the last, he would never meddle 
in them ; for he thought these might be often 
legal and warrantable actions, and that the 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 33 

putting men to death on that account was mur- 
der ; but for the ordinary felonies, he at first 
was of opinion that it was as necessary even 
in times of usurpation to execute justice in 
those cases, as in the matters of property. 
But after the King was murdered, he laid by all 
his collections of the pleas of the crown ; and 
that they might not fail into ill hands, he hid 
them behind the wainscotting of his study, for 
he said there was no more occasion to use 
them, till the King should be again restored 
to his right; and so upon his majesty's resto- 
ration he took them out, and went on in his 
design to perfect that great work. 

Yet for some time after he was made a 
judge, when he went the circuit, he did sit on 
the crown side, and judged criminals ; but 
having considered farther of it, he came to 
think that it was at least better not to do it . 
and so after the second or third circuit, he 
refused to sit any more on the crown side 
and told plainly the reason, for in matters of 
blood he was always to choose the safer side : 
and indeed he had so carried himself in some 
trials, that they were not unwilling he should 
withdraw from meddling farther in them, of 
which I shall give some instances. 

Not long after he was made a judge, which 
was in the year 1653, when he went the cii' 



34 THE LIFE OF 

cuit, a trial was brought before him at Lin- 
coln, concerning the murder of one of the 
townsmen, who had been of the king*s party, 
and was killed by a soldier of the garrison 
there. He was in the fields with a fowling- 
piece on his shoulder, which the soldier see- 
ing, he came to him and said, it was contrary 
to an order which the Protector had made, 
That none who had been of the king's party 
should carry arms, and so he would have 
forced it from him ; but as the other did not 
regard the order, so being stronger than the 
soldier, he threw him down, and having beat 
him, he left him : the soldier went into the 
town, and told one of his fellow-soldiers how 
he had been used, and. got him to go with 
him, and lie in wait for the man that he 
might be revenged on him. They both 
watched his coming to town, and one of them 
went to him to demand his gun, which he 
refusing, the soldier struck at him^ and as 
they were struggling, the other came behind, 
and ran his sword into his body, of which he 
presently died. It was in the time of the 
assizes, so they were both tried : against the 
one there was no evidence of forethought 
felony, so he was only found guilty of 
manslaughter, and burnt in the hand ; but 
the other was found guilty of murder : and 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 35 

though Colonel Whaley, who commanded the 
garrison, came into tlie court and urged that 
the man was killed only for disobeying the 
Protector's orders, and that the soldier was 
but doing his duty ; yet the judge regarded 
both his reasons and threatenings very little, 
and therefore he not only gave sentence 
against him, but ordered the execution to be 
so suddenly done, that it might not be possi- 
ble to procure a reprieve, which he believed 
would have been obtained, if there had been 
time enough granted for it. 

Another occasion was given him of show- 
ing both his justice and courage, when he 
was in another circuit : he understood that 
the Protector had ordered a jury to be return- 
ed for a trial in which he was more than 
ordinarily concerned : upon this information, 
he examined the sheriff about it, who knew 
nothing of it, for he said he referred all such 
things to the under-sheriff, and having next 
asked the under-sheriff concerning it, he 
found the jury had been returned by order 
from Cromwell : upon which he showed the 
statute, that all juries ought to be returned by 
the sheriff, or his lawful officer ; and this not 
being done according to law, he dismissed the 
jury, and would not try the cause : upon 
which the Protector was highly displeased 



3^6 THE LIFE OF 

with him, and at his return from the circuit, 
he told him in anger he was not fit to be a 
judge ; to which all the answer he made was, 
that it was very true. 

Another thing met him in the circuit, upon 
which he resolved to have proceeded severe- 
ly : some anabaptists had rushed into a 
church, and had disturbed a congregation 
while they were receiving the sacrament, not 
without some violence ; at this he was highly 
offended, for he said it was intolerable for 
men who pretended so highly to liberty of 
conscience, to go and disturb others ; especi- 
ally those who had the encouragement of the 
law on their side : but these were so supported 
by some great magistrates and officers, that a 
stop was pnt to his proceedings ; upon v/hich 
he declared he would meddle no more with 
the trials on the crown side. 

When Penruddock's trial was brought on, 
there was a special messenger sent to him re- 
quiring him to assist at it. It was in vaca- 
tion time, and he was at his country-house at 
Alderley. He plainly refused to go, and said 
the four terms and two circuits were enough, 
and the little interval that was between was 
little enough for their private affairs, and so 
he excused himself : he thought it was not 
necessary to speak more clearly, but if he had 



Sni MATTHEW HALE. 37 

been urged to it, he would not have been 
afraid of doing it. 

He was at that time chosen a parliament 
man, for there being then no House of Lords, 
judges might have been chosen to sit in the 
House of Commons ; and he went to it, on 
design to obstruct the mad and wicked pro- 
jects then on foot, by two parties that had 
very different principles and ends. 

On the one hand, some that were perhaps 
more sincere;, yet were really brain-sick, de- 
signed they knew not what, being resolved to 
pull down a standing ministry, the law and 
property of England, and all the ancient rules 
of this government, and set up in its room an 
indigested enthusiastical scheme, which they 
called the kingdom of Christ, or of his saints ; 
many of them being really in expectation that 
one day or another Christ would come down 
and sit among them, and at least they 
thought to begin the glorious thousand years 
mentioned in the Revelation. 

Others at the same time, taking advantages 
from the fears and apprehensions that all the 
sober men of the nation were in, lest they 
should fall under the tyranny of a distracted 
sort of people, who to all their other ill prin- 
ciples added great cruelty, which they had 
copied from those at Munster in the former 

E 



38 THE LIFE OF 

age, intended to improve that opportunity to 
raise their own fortunes and families. Amidst 
these, judge Hale steered a middle course ; 
for as he would engage for neither side, so he 
with a great many more worthy men came to 
parliaments, more out of a design to hinder 
mischief, than to do much good ; wisely fore- 
seeing, that the inclinations for the royal family 
w^ere daily growing so much, that in time the 
disorders then in agitation would ferment to 
that happy resolution in which they deter- 
mined in May 1660. And therefore all that 
could be then done was, to oppose the ill de- 
signs of both parties, the enthusiasts as well as 
the usurpers. Among the other extravagant 
motions made in this parliament, one was, to 
destroy all the records in the Tower, and to 
settle the nation on a new foundation ; so he 
took this province to himself, to show the 
madness of this proposition, the injustice of 
it, and the mischiefs that would follow on it; 
and did it with such clearness, and strength 
of reason, as not only satisfied all sober per- 
sons, for it may be supposed that was soon 
done, but stopped even the mouths of the 
frantic people themselves. 

Thus he continued administering justice till 
the Protector died ; but then he both refused 
the mournings that were sent to him and his 



SIH MATTHEW^ HALE. 39 

servants for the funeral, and likewise to accept 
of the new commission that was offered him 
by Richard ; and when the rest of the judges 
urged it upon him, and employed others to 
press him to accept of it, he rejected all their 
importunities, and said he could act no longer 
under such authority. 

He lived a private man till the parliament 
met that called home the King, to which he 
was returned knight of the shire from the 
county of Gloucester. It appeared at that 
time hov/ much he was beloved and esteemed 
in his neighbourhood ; for, though another 
who stood in competition with him had spent 
near a thousand pounds to procure voices, a 
great sum to be employed that way in those 
days, and he had been at no cost, and was so 
far from soliciting it, that he had stood out 
long against those v/ho pressed him to appear, 
and he did not promise to appear till three 
days before the election, yet he was preferred. 
He was brought thither almost by violence, 
by the Lord now Earl of Berkeley, who bore 
all the charge of the entertainments on the 
day of his election, which was considerable, 
and had engaged all his friends and interest 
for him : and whereas by the writ, the knight 
of a shire must be miles gladio cinctus, and 
he had no sv^^ord, that noble lord girt him 



40 THE LIFE OF 

with his own sword during the election, but 
he was soon weary of it, for the embroidery 
of the belt did not suit well with the plainness 
of his clothes : and indeed the election did 
not hold long, for as soon as ever he came 
into the field, he was chosen by much the 
greater number, though the poll continued 
for three or four days. 

In that parliament he bore his share, in 
the happy period then put to the confusions 
that threatened the utter ruin of the nation, 
which, contrary to the expectations of the 
most sanguine, settled in so serene and quiet 
a manner, that those who had formerly built 
so much on their success, calling it an an- 
swer from heaven to their solemn appeals to 
the providence of God, were now not a little 
confounded, to see all this turned against 
themselves, in an instance much more ex- 
traordinary than any of those were upon 
which they had built so much. His great 
prudence and excellent temper led him to 
think, that the sooner an act of indemnity 
were passed, and the fuller it were of graces 
and favours, it would sooner settle the na- 
tion, and quiet the minds of the people ; 
and therefore he applied himself with a par- 
ticular care to the framing and carrying it 
on : in which it was visible he had no concern 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 41 

of his own, but merely his love of the public 
that set him on to it. 

Soon after this, when the courts in West- 
minster Hall came to be settled, he was made 
lord chief baron, in November ; and when 
the Earl of Clarendon, then lord chancellor, 
delivered him his commission, in the speech 
he made according to the custom on such 
occasions, he expressed his esteem of him in 
a very singular manner, telling him among 
other things, that if the King could have 
found out an honester and fitter man for that 
employment, he would not have advanced 
him to it; and that he had therefore pre- 
ferred him, because he knew none that de- 
served it so well. It is ordinary for persons 
so promoted to be knighted, but he desired 
to avoid having that honour done him, and 
therefore for a considerable time declined all 
opportunities of waiting on the King ; which 
the lord chancellor observing, sent for him 
upon business one day when the King v/as at 
his house, and told his majesty there was his 
modest chief baron ; upon which he was un- 
expectedly knighted. 

He continued eleven years in that place, 

managing the court, and ail proceedings in 

it with singular justice. It was observed by 

the whole nation, hov/ much he raised the 

E 3 



42 THE LIFE OF 

reputation and practice of it : and those who 
held places and offices in it can ail declare, 
not only the impartiality of his justice, for 
that is but a common virtue, but his gene- 
rosity, his vast diligence, and his great ex- 
actness in trials. This gave occasion to the 
only complaint that ever was made of him, that 
he did not despatch matters quick enough ; but 
the great care he used to put suits to a final 
end, as it made him slower in deciding them, 
so it had this good efiect, that causes tried 
before him were seldom if ever tried again. 

Nor did his administration of justice lie 
only in that court : he was one of the princi- 
pal judges that sat in Clifibrd's Inn about 
settling the difference between landlord and 
tenant after the dreadful fire of London ; he 
being the first that offered his service to the 
city for accommodating all the differences 
that might have arisen about the rebuilding 
it, in which he behaved himself to the satis- 
faction of all persons concerned ; so that the 
sudden and quiet building of the city, which 
is justly to be reckoned one of the wonders 
of the age, is in no small measure due to the 
great care which he and Sir Orlando Bridge- 
man, then lord chief justice of the Common 
Pleas, afterwards lord keeper of the great 
seal of England, used, and to the judgment 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 43 

they showed in that affair : since without the 
rules then laid down, there might have other- 
wise followed such an endless train of vexa- 
tious suits, as might have been little less 
chargeable than the fire itself had been. But 
without detracting from the labours of the 
other judges, it must be acknowledged that 
he was the most instrumental in that great 
work ; for he first by way of scheme con- 
trived the rules upon vvhich he and the rest 
proceeded afterwards ; in which his readiness 
at arithmetic, and his skill in architecture, 
were of great use to him. 

But it will not seem strange that a judge be- 
haved himself as he did, who at the entry into 
his employment set such excellent rules to him- 
self, which will appear in the following paper 
copied from the original under his own hand. 

THINGS NECESSARY TO BE CONTINUALLY 
HAD IN REMEMBRANCE. 

I. That in the administration of justice, I am 

entrusted for God, the king and country ; 
and therefore, 

II. That it be done : 1. Uprightly ; 2. Deli- 

berately ; 3. Resolutely. 

III. That I rest not upon m.y own understand- 
ing or strength, but implore and rest 
upon the direction and strength of God. 

IV. That in the execution of justice, I care- 



44 THE LIFE OF 

fully lay aside my own passions, and not 
give way to them, however provoked. 

V. That I be wholly intent upon the business 

I am about J remitting all other cares and 
thoughts as unseasonable and interrup- 
tions. 

VI. That I suffer not myself to be prepossess- 
ed with any judgment at all, till the 
whole business and both parties be heard. 

VII. That I never engage myself in the be- 
ginning of any cause, but reserve myself 
unprejudiced till the whole be heard. 

VIII. That in business capital, though my na- 
ture prompt me to pity, yet to consider 
that there is also a pity due to the country. 

IX. That I be not too rigid in matters purely 
conscientious, where all the harm is di- 
versity of judgment. 

X. That I be not biassed v/ith compassion to 

the poor, or favour to the rich, in point 
of justice. 

XI. That popular or court applause, or dis- 
taste, have no influence into any thing I 
do in point of distribution of justice. 

XII. Not to be solicitous what men will say 
or think, so long as I keep myself exactly 
according to the rule of justice. 

XIII. If in criminals it be a measuring cast, 
to incline to mercy and acquittal. 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 45 

XIV. In criminals that consist merely in 
words, when no more harm ensues, mode- 
ration is no injustice. 

XV. In criminals of blood, if the fact be evi- 
dent, severity is justice. 

XVI. To abhor all private solicitations, of 
what kind soever, and by whom soever, 
in matters depending. 

XVII. To charge my servants : 1 . Not to in- 
terpose in any business whatsoever ; 2. 
Not to take more than their known fees ; 
3. Not to give any undue precedence to 
causes; 4. Not to recommend counsel. 

XVIII. To be short and sparing at meals, 
that I may be the fitter for business. 

He would never receive private addresses or 
recommendations from the greatest persons in 
any matter in which justice was concerned. 
One of the first peers of England went once 
to his chamber, and told him, that having a 
suit in law to be tried before him, he was then 
to acquaint him with it, that he might the 
better understand it when it should come to 
be heard in court. Upon which the lord chief 
baron interrupted him, and said he did not 
deal fairly to come to his chamber about such 
affairs, for he never received any information 
of causes but in open court, where both par- 



46 THE LIFE OF 

ties were to be heard alike ; so he would not 
suffer him to go on : whereupon his Grace 
(for he was a duke) went away not a little 
dissatisfied, and complained of it to the King 
as a rudeness that was not to be endured. 
But his majesty bade him content himself 
that he was no worse used, and said, he verily 
believed he would have used himself no better, 
if he had gone to solicit him in any of his 
own causes. 

Another passage fell out in one of his cir- 
cuits^ which was somewhat censured as an 
affectation of an unreasonable strictness, but 
it flowed from his exactness to the rules he 
had set himself: a gentleman had sent him a 
buck for his table, that had a trial at the 
assizes ; so when he heard his name, he asked 
if he was not the same person that had sent 
him venison, and finding he was the same, he 
told him, he could not suffer the trial to go 
on till he had paid him for his buck ; to 
which the gentleman answered, that he never 
sold his venison, and that he had done nothing 
to him which he did not do to every judge 
that had gone that circuit, which was con- 
firmed by several gentlemen then present : but 
all would not do, for the lord chief baron had 
learned from Solomon, that " a gift perverteth 
the ways of judgment,'' and therefore he 



SIR iMATTHEV/ HALE. 47 

would not suffer the trial to go on, till he had 
paid for the present ; upon which the gentle- 
man withdrew the record. And at Salisbury, 
the dean and chapter having according to the 
custom presented him with six sugar-loaves 
in his circuit, he made his servants pay for 
the sugar before he would try their cause. 

It was not so easy for him to throw off the 
importunities of the poor, for whom his com- 
passion wrought more powerfully than his re- 
gard to wealth and greatness ; yet, when jus- 
tice was concerned, even that did not turn 
him out of the way. There was one that had 
been put out of a place for some ill behaviour, 
who urged the lord chief baron to set his 
hand to a certificate to restore him to it, or 
provide him with another ; but he told him 
plainly his fault was such that he could not 
do it : the other pressed him vehemently and 
fell down on his knees, and begged it of him 
with many tears ; but finding that could not 
prevail, he said he should be utterly ruined if 
he did it not, and he should curse him for 
it every day : but that having no effect, then 
he fell out into all the reproachful words that 
passion and despair could inspire him with ; 
to which all the answer the lord chief baron 
made was, that he could very well bear all his 
reproaches, but he could not for all that set 



48 THE LIFE OF 

his hand to his certificate. He saw he was 
poor, so he gave him a large charity, and sent 
him away. 

But now he was to go on after his pattern 
Pomponius Atticus, still to favour and relieve 
them that were lowest; so besides great, cha- 
rities to the nonconformists, who were then, 
as he thought, too hardly used, he took great 
care to cover them all he could from the seve- 
rities some designed against them, and dis- 
couraged those who were inclined to stretch 
the laws too much against them. He lamented 
the differences that were raised in this church 
very much ; and according to the impartiality 
of his justice, he blamed some things on both 
sides, which I shall set down with the same 
freedom that he spake them. He thought 
many of the nonconformists had merited 
highly in the business of the king's restora- 
tion, and at least deserved that the terms of 
conformity should not have been made stricter 
than they were before the war. There was 
not then that dreadful prospect of popery 
that has appeared since. But that which 
afflicted him most was, that he saw the heats 
and contentions which followed upon those 
different parties and interests, did take people 
off from the indispensable things of religion, 
and slackened the zeal of otherwise good men 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 49 

for the substance of it, so much being spent 
about external and indifferent things. It also 
gave advantages to atheists to treat the most 
sacred points of our holy faith as ridiculous* 
when they saw the professors of it contend so 
fiercely, and with such bitterness, about lesser 
matters. He was much offended at all those 
books that were written to expose the contrary 
sect to the scorn and contempt of the age 
in a wanton and petulant style : he thought 
such writers wounded the Christian religion, 
through the sides of those who differed from 
them ; while a sort of lewd people, who having 
assumed to themselves the title of the Wits, 
though but a very few of them have a right 
to it, took up from both hands what they had 
said to make one another show ridiculous, and 
from thence persuaded the world to laugh at 
both, and at all religion for their sakes. And 
therefore he often wished there might be some 
law to make all scurrility or bitterness, in dis- 
putes about religion, punishable. But as he 
lamented the proceeding too rigorously against 
the nonconformists, so he declared himself al- 
ways of the side of the Church of England, and 
said those of the separation were good men, 
but they had narrow souls, who would break 
the peace of the church about such inconsider- 
able matters as the points in difference were. 

F 



50 THE LIFE OF 

He scarce ever meddled in state intrigues, 
yet, upon a proposition that was set on foot 
by the lord keeper Bridgeman, for a compre- 
hension of the more moderate dissenters, and 
a limited indulgence towards such as could 
not be brought within the comprehension, 
he dispensed with his maxim of avoiding to 
engage in matters of state. There were se- 
veral meetings upon that occasion : the di- 
vine of the church of England that appeared 
most considerably for it was Dr. Wilkins, 
afterwards promoted to the bishoprick of 
Chester, a man of as great a mind, as true a 
judgment, as eminent virtues, and of as good 
a soul, as any I ever knew* He being de- 
termined as well by his excellent temper, as 
by his foresight and prudence, by which he 
early perceived the great prejudices that re- 
ligion received, and the vast dangers the re- 
formation was likely to fall under by those 
divisions, set about that project with the 
magnanimity that was indeed peculiar to 
himself; for though he was much censured 
by many of his own side, and seconded by 
very few, yet he pushed it as far as he 
could. After several conferences with two 
of the most eminent of the Presbyterian 
divines, heads were agreed on, some abate- 
ments were to be made, and explanations 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 51 

were to be accepted of. The particulars of 
that project being thus concerted, they were 
brought to the lord chief baron, who put 
them in form of a bill, to be presented to the 
next session of parliament. 

But two parties appeared vigorously against 
this design ; the one was of some zealous 
clergymen, who thought it below the dignity 
of the church to alter laws, and change set- 
tlements for the sake of some whom they es- 
teemed schismatics : they also believed it 
was better to keep them out of the church 
than bring them into it, since a faction upon 
that would arise in the church, which they 
thought might be more dangerous than the 
schism itself was. Besides they said, if some 
things were now to be changed in compliance 
with the humour of a party, as soon as that 
was done another party might demand other 
concessions, and there might be as good 
reasons invented for these as for those : many 
such concessions might also shake those of 
our own communion, and tempt them to for- 
sake us and go over to the church of Rome, 
pretending that we changed so often, that 
they were thereby inclined to he of a church 
that was constant and true to herself. These 
were the reasons brought, and chiefly in- 
sisted on, against all comprehension ; and 



52 ' THE LIFE OF 

they wrought upon the greater part of the 
House of Commons, so that they passed a vote 
against the receiving of any bill for that effect. 

There were others that opposed it upon 
very different ends ; they designed to shelter 
the papists from the execution of the law, 
and saw clearly that nothing could bring in 
popery so well as a toleration. But to tole- 
rate popery bare-faced would have startled 
the nation too much ; so it was necessary to 
hinder all the propositions for union, since 
the keeping up the differences was the best 
colour they could find for getting the tole- 
ration to pass only as a slackening the laws 
against dissenters, whose numbers and wealth 
made it advisable to have some regard to 
them ; and under this pretence popery might 
have crept in more covered, and less re- 
garded. So these counsels being more ac- 
ceptable to some concealed papists, then in 
great power, as has since appeared but too 
evidently, the w^hole project for comprehen- 
sion was let fall, and those who had set it on 
foot came to be looked on with an ill eye, as 
secret favourers of the dissenters, underminers 
of the church, and every thing else that jea- 
lousy and distaste could cast upon them. 

But upon this occasion the lord chief baron 
and Dr. Wilkin s came to contract a firm and 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 5S 

familiar friendship ; and the lord chief baron 
having much business, and little time to 
spare, did, to enjoy the other the more, what 
he had scarce ever done before — he went 
sometimes to dine with him. And though 
he lived in great friendship with some other 
eminent clergymen, as Dr. Ward, bishop of 
Salisbury ; Dr. Barlow, bishop of Lincoln ; 
Dr. Barrow, late master of Trinity College ; 
Dr. Tillotson, dean of Canterbury ; and Dr. 
Stillingfleet, dean of St. Paul's, (men so well 
known and so much esteemed, that as it v/as 
no wonder the lord chief baron valued their 
conversation highly, so those of them that 
are yet alive will think it no lessening of the 
character they are so deservedly in, that they 
are reckoned among judge Hale's friends,) 
yet there was an intimacy and freedom in his 
converse with bishop Wilkins that was sin- 
gular to him alone. He had, during the late 
wars, lived in a long and entire friendship 
with the apostolical primate of Ireland, bi- 
shop Usher : their curious searches into an- 
tiquity, and the sympathy of both their tem- 
pers, led them to a great agreement almost 
in every thing. He held also great conver- 
sation with Mr. Baxter, who was his neigh- 
bour at Acton, on whom he looked as a per- 
son of great devotion and piety, and of a very 
r 3 



54 THE LIFE OF 

subtile and quick apprehension : their con- 
versation lay most in metaphysical and abs- 
tracted ideas and schemes. 

He looked with great sorrow on the impiety 
and atheism of the age, and so he set himself 
to oppose it, not only by the shining example 
of his own life, but by engaging in a cause 
that indeed could hardly fall into better hands : 
and as he could not find a subject more worthy 
of himself, so there were few in the age that 
understood it so well, and could manage it 
more skilfully. The occasion that first led 
him to write about it was this : — He was a 
strict observer of the Lord's-day, in which, 
besides his constancy in the public worship of 
God, he used to call all his family together, 
and repeat to them the heads of the sermons, 
with S9me additions of his own, which he fit- 
ted for their capacities and circumstances ; 
and that being done, he had a custom of shut- 
ting himself up for two or three hours, which 
he either spent in his secret devotions, or on 
such profitable meditations as did then occur 
to his thoughts. He wrote them with the 
same simplicity that he formed them in his 
mind, without any art, or so much as a thought 
to let them be published : he never corrected 
them, but laid them by when he had finished 
them, having intended only to fix and preserve 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 55 

his own reflections in them : so that he used 
no sort of care to polish them, or make the 
first draught more perfect than when they fell 
from his pen. These fell into the hands of a 
worthy person, and he judging, as well he 
might, that the communicating them to the 
world might be a public service, printed two 
volumes of them in octavo, a little before the 
author's death, containing his 

CONTEMPLATIONS. 

1 . Of our latter End. 

2. Of Wisdom, and the Fear of God. 

S, Of the knowledge of Christ crucified. 

4. The Victory of Faith over the World. 

5. Of Humility. 

6. Jacob's Vow. 

7. Of Contentation. 

8. Of Afflictions. 

Q. A good method to entertain unstable and 
troublesome Times, 

10. Changes and Troubles, a Poem. 

11. Of the Redemption of Time. 

12. The great Audit. 

13. Directions touching keeping the Lord's- 

day, in a Letter to his Children. 

14. Poems written upon Christmas-day. 

[In the Scco?id Volume.'] 

1. An Enquiry touching Happiness. 

2, Of the chief End of Man. 



56 THE LIFE OF 

3. Upon 12 Eccles. 1. Remember thy Cre- 

ator. 

4. Upon the 51st Psalm, v. 10. Create a 

clean heart in me ; with a poem. 

5. The Folly and Mischief of Sin. 

6. Of Self-Denial. 

7. Motives to Watchfulness, in reference to 

the Good and Evil Angels. 

8. Of Moderation of the Affections. 

9. Of worldly Hope and Expectation. 

10. Upon 13 Heb. 14. We have here no 

continuing city. 

11. Of Contentedness and Patience. 

12. Of Moderation of Anger. 

13. A Preparative against Afflictions. 

14. Of Submission, Prayer, and Thanksgiving, 

15. Of Prayer and Thanksgiving, on Psalm 

116,12. 

16. Meditations on the Lord's Prayer, with a 

Paraphrase upon it. 
In them there appears a generous and true 
spirit of religion, mixed with most serious and 
fervent devotion ; and perhaps with the more 
advantage, that the style wants some correc- 
tion, which shows they w^ere the genuine pro- 
ductions of an excellent mind, entertaining 
itself in secret with such contemplations. The 
style is clear and masculine, in a due temper 
between flatness and affectation, in which he 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 57 

expresses his thoughts both easily and decent- 
ly. In writing these discourses, having run 
over most of the subjects that his own circum- 
stances led him chiefly to consider, he began 
to be in some pain to choose new arguments, 
and therefore resolved to fix on a theme that 
should hold him longer. 

He was soon determined in his choice by 
the immoral and irreligious principles and 
practices that had so long vexed his righteous 
soul ; and therefore began a great design 
against atheism, the first part of which is only 
printed, of the Origination of Mankind, de- 
signed to prove the creation of the world, and 
the truth of the Mosaical history. 

The second part was of the Nature of the 
Soul, and of a Future State. 

The third part was concerning the Attri- 
butes of God, both from the abstracted ideas 
of him, and the light of nature ; the evidence 
of providence, the notions of morality, and 
the voice of conscience. 

And the fourth part was concerning the 
Truth and Authority of the Scriptures, with 
Answers to the Objections against them. On 
writing these he spent seven years. He wrote 
them with so much consideration, that one 
who perused the original under his own hand, 
which was the first draught of it, told me, he 



58 THE LIFE OF 

did not remember any considerable alteration, 
perhaps not of twenty words in the whole 
work. 

The way of his writing them, only on the 
evenings of the Lord's-day, when he was in 
town, and not much oftener when he was in 
the country, made that they are not so con- 
tracted, as it is very likely he would have 
written them if he had been more at leisure to 
have brought his thoughts into a narrower 
compass and fewer words. 

But making some allowance for the large- 
ness of the style, that volume that is printed 
is generally acknowledged to be one of the 
most perfect pieces both of learning and rea- 
soning that has been written on that subject ; 
and he who read a great part of the other 
volumes, told me they were all of a piece 
with the first. 

When he had finished this work, he sent it 
by an unknown hand to bishop Wilkins, to 
desire his judgment of it ; but he that brought 
it would give no other account of the author, 
but that he was not a clergyman. The 
bishop, and his worthy friend Dr. Tillotson, 
read a great deal of it with much pleasure, 
but could not imagine who could be the 
author, and how a man that was master of so 
much reason, and so great a variety of know- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE, 59 

ledge, should be so unknown to them, that 
they could not find him out by those charac- 
ters which are so little common. At last 
Dr. Tillotson guessed it must be the lord 
chief baron, to which the other presently 
agreed, wondering he had been so long in 
finding it out. So they went immediately to 
him, and the bishop thanking him for the en- 
tertainment he had received from his works, 
he blushed extremely, not without some dis- 
pleasure, apprehending that the person he 
had trusted had discovered him. But the 
bishop soon cleared that, and told him he had 
discovered himself, for the learning of that 
book was so various, that none but he could 
be the author of it. And that bishop having 
a freedom in delivering his opinions of things 
and persons, which perhaps few ever managed 
both with so much plainness and prudence, 
told him, there was nothing could be better 
said on these arguments, if he could bring it 
into a less compass ; but if he had not leisure 
for that, he thought it much better to have it 
come out, though a little too large, than that 
the world should be deprived of the good 
which it must needs do. But our judge had 
never the opportunities of revising it, so a 
little before his death he sent the first part of 
it to the press. 



60 THE LIFE OF 

In the beginning of it he gives an essay of 
his excellent way of methodizing things, in 
which he was so great a master, that what- 
ever he undertook, he would presently cast 
into so perfect a scheme, that he could never 
afterwards correct it. He runs out copiously 
upon the argument of the impossibility of an 
eternal succession of time, to show that time 
and eternity are inconsistent one with another ; 
and that therefore all duration that was past, 
and defined by time, could not be from eter- 
nity ; and he shows the difference between 
successive eternity already past, and one to 
come ; so that, though the latter is possible, 
the former is not so ; for all the parts of the 
former have actually been, and therefore, 
being defined by time, cannot be eternal; 
whereas the other are still future to all eter- 
nity : so that this reasoning cannot be turned 
to prove the possibility of eternal successions 
that have been, as well as eternal successions 
that shall be. This he follows with a strength 
I never met with in any that managed it be- 
fore him. 

He brings next all those moral arguments to 
prove that the world had a beginning, agree- 
ing to the account Moses gives of it, as that 
no history rises higher than near the time of 
the Deluge, and that the first foundation of 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 61 

kingdoms, the invention of arts, the be- 
ginnings of ail religions, the gradual planta- 
tion of the world and increase of mankind, 
and the consent of nations, do agree with it. 
In managing these, as he shows profound 
skill both in historical and philosophical 
learning, so he gives a noble discovery of his 
great candour and probity, that he would not 
impose on the reader with a false show of rea- 
soning by arguments that he knew had flaws 
in them ; and therefore, upon every one of 
these he adds such allays, as in a great mea- 
sure lessened and took off their force with as 
much exactness of judgment and strictness 
of censure, as if he had been set to plead for 
the other side ; and, indeed, sums up the 
whole evidence for religion as impartially as 
ever he did in a trial for life or death to the 
jury ; which how equally and judiciously he 
did, the whole nation well knows. 

After that, he examines the ancient opinions 
of the philosophers, and enlarges with a great 
variety of curious reflections in answering that 
only argument that has any appearance of 
strength for the casual production of man, 
from the origination of insects out of putrified 
matter, as is commonly supposed ; and he 
concluded the book, showing how rational and 
philosophical the account which Moses gives 

G 



62 THE LfFE OF 

of it is. There is in it all, a sagacity and 
quickness of thought, mixed with great and 
curious learning, that I confess I never met to- 
gether in any other book on that subject. 
Among other conjectures, one he gives con- 
cerning the Deluge is, that he did not think 
the face of the earth and the waters were alto- 
gether the same before the universal Deluge, 
and after ; but possibly the face of the earth 
was more even than now it is ; the seas pos- 
sibly more dilated and extended, and not so 
deep as now. And a little after, possibly the 
seas have undermined much of the appearing 
continent of earth. This I the rather take no- 
tice of, because it hath been, since his death, 
made out in a most ingenious and most ele- 
gantly written book, by Mr. Burnet, of Christ's 
College in Cambridge, who has given such an 
essay towards the proving the possibility of an 
universal deluge, and from thence has collect- 
ed, with great sagacity, what Paradise was 
before it, as has not been offered by any phi- 
losopher before h/m. 

While the judge was thus employing his 
time, the lord chief justice Keyling dying, he 
was, on the 18th of May, 1671, promoted to 
be lord chief justice of England. He had 
made the pleas of the crown one of his chief 
studies, and by much search and long ob- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 65 

servation had composed that great work con- 
cerning them formerly mentioned. He that 
holds the high office of justiciary in that 
court being the chief trustee and asserter of 
the liberties of his country, all people applaud- 
ed this choice, and thought their liberties 
could not be better deposited than in the 
hands of one, that, as he understood them 
well, so he had all the justice and courage 
that so sacred a trust required. One thing 
was much observed and commended in him, 
that when there was a great inequality in the 
ability and learning of the counsellors that 
were to plead one against another, he thought 
it became him, as the judge, to supply that ; 
so he would enforce what the weaker counsel 
managed but indifferently, and not suffer the 
more learned to carry the business by the ad- 
vantage they had over the others in their 
quickness and skill in law, and readiness in 
pleading, till all things were cleared in which 
the merits and strength of the ill-defended 
cause lay. He was not satisfied barely to give 
his judgment in causes, but did especially in 
all intricate ones, give such an account of the 
reasons that prevailed with him, that the coun- 
sel did not only acquiesce in his authority, 
but were so convinced by his reasons that I 
have heard many profess that he brought them 



64 THE LIFE Of 

often to change their opinions ; so that his 
giving of judgment was really a learned lec- 
ture upon that point of law ; and which was 
yet more, the parties themselves, though in- 
terest does too commonly corrupt the judg- 
ment, were generally satisfied with the justice 
of his decisions, even when they were made 
against them. His impartial justice and great 
diligence drew the chief practice after him, 
into whatsoever court he came : since, though 
the courts of Common Pleas, the Exchequer, 
and the King's Bench, are appointed for the 
trial of causes of different natures, yet it is 
easy to bring most causes into any of them, 
as the counsel or attorneys please ; so, as he 
had drawn the business much after him, both 
into the Common Pleas and the Exchequer 
it now followed him into the King's Bench, 
and many causes that were depending in the 
Exchequer and not determined, were let fall 
there, and brought agaia before him in the 
court to which he was now removed. And 
here did he spend the rest of his public life 
and employment. But about four years and 
a half after this advancement, he, who had 
hitherto enjoyed a firm and vigorous health, 
to which his great temperance and the equa- 
lity of his mind did not a little conduce, was 
on a sudden brought very low by an inflam- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 65 

mation in the diaphragm, which in two days' 
time broke the constitution of his health to 
such a degree that he never recovered it. He 
became so asthmatical, that with great diffi- 
culty he could fetch his breath ; that deter- 
mined, in a dropsy, of which he afterwards 
died. He understood physic so well, that, 
considering his age, he concluded his distem- 
per must carry him off in a little time ; and 
therefore he resolved to have some of the last 
months of his life reserved to himself, that, 
being freed of all worldly cares, he might be 
preparing for his change. He was also so 
much disabled in his body, that he could 
hardly, though supported by his servants, 
walk through Westminster Hall, or endure 
the toil of business. He had been a long 
time wearied with the distractions that hig 
employment had brought on him, and his pro- 
fession was become ungrateful to him ; he 
loved to apply himself wholly to better pur- 
poses, as will appear by a paper that he wrote 
on this subject, which I shall here insert : 

^' First, If I consider the business of my 
profession,^ whether as an advocate or as a 
judge, it is true I do acknowledge, by the in- 
stitution of Almighty God, and the dispensa- 
tion of his providence, lam bound to industry, 
and fidelity in it; and as it is an act of obe- 
G 3 



€6 THE LliFE Oi' 

dience unto his will, it carries with it some- 
thing of religious duty, and I may and do take 
comfort in it, and expect a reward of my obe- 
dience to him, and the good that I do to man- 
kind therein, from the bounty and beneficence 
and promise of Almighty God. And it is true 
also, that without such employments, civil 
societies cannot be supported, and great good 
redounds to mankind from them ; and in 
these respects, the conscience of my own in- 
dustry, fidelity, and integrity in them, is a 
great comfort and satisfaction to me. But 
yet this I must say concerning these employ- 
ments, considered simply in themselves, that 
they are very full of cares, anxieties, and per- 
turbations. 

" Secondly, That though they are bene- 
ficial to others, yet they are of the least benefit 
to him that is employed in them. 

'* Thirdly, That they do necessarily involve 
the party, whose office it is, in great dangers, 
difficulties, and calumnies. 

" Fourthly, That they only serve for the 
meridian of this life, which is short and un- 
certain. 

'' Fifthly, That though it be my duty faith- 
fully to serve in them while I am called to 
them, and till I am duly called from them, 
yet they are great consumers of that little 



SIR MATTHEW MALE. G7 

time we have here, which, as it seems to me, 
might be better spent in a pious contempla- 
tive life, and a due provision for eternity. I 
do not know a better temporal employment 
than Martha had, in testifying her love and 
duty to our Skviour, by making provision for 
him ; y^t our Lord tells her, That though she 
was troubled about many things, there was 
only one thing necessary, and Mary had 
chosen the better part." 

By this the reader will see that he continued 
in his station upon no other consideration 
but that, being set in it by the providence of 
God, he judged he could not abandon that 
post which w^as assigned him, without prefer- 
ring his own private inclination to the choice 
God had made for him ; but now, that same 
Providence having by this great distemper 
disengaged him from the obligation of hold- 
ing a place which he was no longer able to 
discharge, he resolved to resign it. This was 
no sooner surmised abroad, than it drew upon 
him the importunities of all his friends, and the 
clamour of the whole town, to divert him from 
it ; but all was to no purpose : there was but 
one argument that could move him, which 
was, that he was obliged to continue in the 
employment God had put him in for the good 
of the public. But to this he had such an 



68 THE LIFE OF 

answer, that even those who W9re most con- 
cerned in his withdrawing, co\ild not but see 
that the reasons inducing hint to it, were but 
too strong ; so he made apphcations to his 
majesty, in January 1675-6, for his writ of 
ease, which the King was very unwilling to 
grant him, and offered to let him hold his 
place still, he doing what business he could 
in his chamber ; but he said he could not with 
a good conscience continue in it, since he was 
no longer able to discharge the duty belong- 
ing to it. 

But yet such was the general satisfaction 
which all the kingdom received by his excel- 
lent administration of justice, that the King, 
though he could not well deny his request, 
yet he deferred the granting of it as long as 
was possible. Nor could the lord chancellor 
be prevailed with to move the King to hasten 
his discharge, though the chief justice often 
pressed him to it. 

At last, having wearied himself and all his 
friends with his importunate desires, and grow- 
ing sensibly weaker in body, he did upon the 
21st day of February, 28 Car. 11. anno Do- 
mini 1675-6, go before a master of the chan- 
cery with a little parchment deed, drawn by 
himself, and written all with his own hand, 
and there sealed and delivered it, and acknow- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 69 

ledged it to be enrolled ; and afterwards he 
brought the original deed to the lord chancel- 
lor, and did formally surrender his office in 
these words : 

" Omnibus Christi fidelibus ad quos prse- 
sens scriptura pervenerit, Matthteus Hale, 
miles, capitalis justiciarius Domini Regis ad 
placita coram ipso rege tenenda assignatus, 
salutem in Domino sempiternam. Noveritis 
me prasfatum Matth^um Hale, militem, 
jam senem factum etvariis corporis mei senilis 
morbis et infirmitatibus dire laborantem et 
adhuc detentum, hac charta mea resignare et 
sursum reddere serenissimo Domino nostro 
Garolo secundo Dei gratia Anglice, Scotise, 
Francise, et Hibernise Regi, fidei defensori, 
&c. predictum officium capitalis justiciarii ad 
placita coram ipso rege tenenda^ humiilime 
petens quod hoc scriptum irrotuletur de re- 
cordo. In cujus rei testimonium huic chartae 
mese resignationis sigillum meum apposui ; 
dat. vicesimo primo die Februarii anno Regni 
dicti Domini Regis nunc vicesimo octavo." 

He made this instrument, as he told the 
lord chancellor, for two ends : the one was to 
show the world his own free concurrence to 
his removal ; another was to obviate an objec- 
tion heretofore made, that a chief justice 
being placed by writ^ was not removable at 



70 THE LIFE OF 

pleasure, as judges by patent were : which 
opinion, as he said, was once held by his pre- 
decessor the lord chief justice Keyling, and 
though he himself were always of another 
opinion, yet he thought it reasonable to pre- 
vent such a scruple. 

He had the day before surrendered to the 
King in person, who parted from him with 
great grace, wishing him most heartily the 
return of his health, and assuring him that he 
would still look upon him as one of his judges, 
and have recourse to his advice when his 
health would permit ; and in the mean time 
would continue his pension during his life. 

The good man thought this bounty too 
great, and an ill precedent for the King, and 
therefore wrote a letter to the lord treasurer, 
earnestly desiring that his pension might be 
only during pleasure ; but the King would 
grant it for life, and make it payable quarterly. 

And yet for a whole month together he 
would not suffer his servant to sue out his 
patent for his pension, and when the first 
payment was received, he ordered a great 
part of it to charitable uses, and said he in- 
tended most of it should be so employed as 
long as it was paid him. 

At last, he happened to die upon the quar- 
ter-day, which was Christmas- day; and though 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 71 

this might have given some occasion to a dis- 
pute whether the pension for that quarter 
were recoverable, yet the King was pleased to 
decide that matter against himself, and order- 
ed the pension to be paid to his executors. 

As soon as he was discharged from his 
great place, he returned home with as much 
cheerfulness as his want of health could 
admit of, being now eased of a burthen he had 
been of late groaning under, and so made more 
capable of enjoying that which he had 
much wished for, according to his elegant 
translation of, or rather paraphrase upon, 
those excellent lines in Seneca's Thyestes, 
Act II. 

'* Stet quicunque volet potens 
Auloe culmine lubrico : 
Me dulcis saturet quies. 
Obscuro positus loco, 
Leni perfruar otio : 
Nullis nota Quiritibus, 
^tas per tacitum fluat. 
Sic cum transierint mei 
Nullo cum strepitu dies, 
Plebeius moriar senex. 
Illi mors gravis incubat, 
Qui notus nimis omnibus, 
Ignotus moritur sibi.'' 



72 THE LIFE OF 

Let him that will, ascend the tottering seat 
Of courtly grandeur, and become as great 
As are his mounting wishes : as for me, 
Let sweet repose and rest my portion be ; 
Give me some mean, obscure recess, a sphere 
Out of the road of business, or the fear 
Of falling lower ; where I sweetly may 
Myself and dear retirement still enjoy : 
Let not my life or name be known unto 
The grandees of the time, toss'd to and fro 
By censures or applause ; but let my age 
Slide gently by, not overthwart the stage 
Of public action, unheard, unseen, 
And unconcerned, as if I ne'er had been. 
And thus, while I shall pass my silent days 
In shady privacy, free from the noise 
And bustles of the mad world, then shall I 
A good old innocent plebeian die. 
Death is a mere surprise, a very snare 
To him, that makes it his life's greatest care 
To be a public pageant, known to all, 
But unacquainted with himself doth fall. 

Having now attained to that privacy which 
he had no less seriously than piously wished 
for, he called all his servants that had belong- 
ed to his office together, and told them he 
had now laid down his place, and so their 
employments were determined. Upon that, 



STK MATTHEW HALE. 73 

he advised them to see for themselveSj and 
gave to some of them very considerable pre- 
sents, and to every one of them a token, 
and so dismissed all those that were not 
his domestics. He was discharged the 15th 
of February, 1675-6, and lived -till the 
Christmas following ; but all the while was 
in so ill a state of health, that there were 
no hopes of his recovery. He continued 
still to retire often, both for his devotions 
and studies ; and as long as he could go, 
went constantly to his closet ; and when 
his infirmities increased on him so that he 
was not able to go thither himself, he made 
his servants carry him thither in a chair. 
At last, as the winter came on, he saw 
with great joy his deliverance approaching, 
for, besides his being weary of the world, 
and his longings for the blessedness of ano- 
ther state, his pains increased so on him, that 
no patience inferior to his could have borne 
them without a great uneasiness of mind; 
yet he expressed to the last such submission 
to the will of God, and so equal a temper 
under them, that it was visible then what 
mighty effects his philosophy and Christianity 
had on him, in supporting him under such a 
heavy load. 

He could not lie down in bed above a 



74 THE LIFE OF 

year before his death, by reason of the 
asthma ; but sat, rather than lay in it. 

He was attended on in his sickness by a 
pious and worthy divine, Mr. Evan Griffith, 
minister of the parish; and it was observed 
that, in all the extremities of his pain, when- 
ever he prayed by him, he forbore all com- 
plaints or groans, but with his hands and eyes 
lifted up was fixed in his devotions. Not 
long before his death, the minister told him 
there was to be a sacrament next Sunday at 
church, but he believed he could not come and 
partake with the rest ; therefore he would give 
it to him in his own house. But he answered, 
'* No : his heavenly Father had prepared a 
feast for him : and he would go to his Fa- 
ther's house to partake of it.'' So he 
made himself be carried thither in his chair, 
where he received the sacrament on his knees 
with great devotion, which it may be suppos- 
ed was the greater, because he apprehended 
it was to be his last, and so took it as his 
viaticum and provision for his journey. He 
had some secret unaccountable presages of his 
death, for he said, that if he did not die on 
such a day, which fell to be the 25th of No- 
vember, he believed he should live a month 
longer; and he died that very day month. 
He continued to enjoy the free use of his 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 75 

reason and sense to the last moment, which 
he had often and earnestly prayed for during 
his sickness. And when his voice was so 
sunk that he could not be heard, they per- 
ceived by the almost constant lifting up of 
his eyes and hands, that he was still aspiring 
towards that blessed state, of which he was 
now speedily to be possessed. 

He had for many years a particular devo- 
tion for Christmas-day, and after he had re- 
ceived the sacrament, and been in the per- 
formance of the public worship of that day, 
he commonly wrote a copy of verses on the 
honour of his Saviour, as a fit expression of 
the joy he felt in his soul at the return of that 
glorious anniversary. There are seventeen of 
those copies printed, which he wrote on seven- 
teen several Christmas-days ; by which the 
world has a taste of his poetical genius, in 
which, if he had thought it worth his time to 
have excelled, he might have been eminent as 
well as in other things ; but he wrote them 
rather to entertain himself, than to merit the 
laurel. 

I shall here add one which has not been 
yet printed, and it is not unlikely it was 
the last he wrote. It is a paraphrase on 
Simeons Song; I take it from his blotted 
copy not at all finished, so the reader is to 



76 THE LIFE OF 

make allowance for any imperfection he may 
find in it. 



'* Blessed Creator, who before the birth 
Of time^ or ere the pillars of the earth 
Were fix'd or form'd, didst lay that great de- 
sign 
Of man's redemption, and didst define 
In thine eternal counsels all the scene 
Of that stupendous business, and when 
It should appear, and though the very day 
Of its Epiphany concealed lay 
Within thy mind, yet thou wert pleased to 

show 
Some glimpses of it unto men below, 
In visions, types, and prophecies, as we 
Things at a distance in perspective see: 
But thou wert pleased to let thy servant 

know 
That that blest hour, that seem*d to move so 

slow 
Through former ages, should at last attain 
Its time, ere my few sands that yet remain 
Are spent ; and that these aged eyes 
Should see the day when Jacob's star should 

rise. 
And now thou hast fulfilled it, blessed Lord, 
Dismiss me now, according to thy word ; 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 7'/ 

And let my aged body now return 

To rest, and dust, and drop into an urn ; 

For I have lived enough, mine eyes have seen 

Thy much-desired salvation, that hath been 

So long, so dearly wish'd ; the joy, the hope 

Of all the ancient patriarchs, the scope 

Of all the prophecies and mysteries, 

Of all the types unveil'd. the histories 

Of Jewish church unriddled, and the bright 

And orient sun arisen to give light 

To gentiles, and the joy of Israel, 

The world's Redeemer, bless'd Emanuel. 

Let this sight close mine eyes, 'tis loss to see, 

After this vision, any sight but Thee." 

Thus he used to sing on the former Christ- 
mas-days, but now he was to be admitted to 
bear his part in the new songs above ; so that 
day which he had spent in so much spiritual 
joy, proved to be indeed the day of his ju- 
bilee and deliverance, for between two and 
three in the afternoon he breathed out his 
righteous and pious soul. His end was 
peace ; he had no strugglings, nor seemed to 
be in any pangs in his last moments. He 
was buried on the 4th of January ; Mr. Grif- 
fith preaching the funeral- sermon, his text 
was the 57th of Isaiah, 1st verse, " The 
H 3 



78 THE LIFE OF 

righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to 
heart ; and merciful men are taken away, 
none considering that the righteous is taken 
away from the evil to come." Which how 
fitly it was applicable upon this occasion, all 
that consider the course of his life will easily 
conclude. He was inteiered in the church- 
yard of Alderley, among his ancestors. He 
did not much approve of burying in churches, 
and used to say, the churches were for the 
living, and the church-yards for the dead. 
His monument was, like himself, decent and 
plain ; / the tombstone was black marble, and 
the sides were black and white marble, upon 
which he himself had ordered this bare and 
humble inscription to be made : 

HIC INHUMATUR CORPUS 

MATTHiEI HALE, MILITIS ; 

ROBERTI HALE, ET JOANNiE 

UXORIS EJUS, riLII UNICI. 

NATI IN HAG PAROCHIA DE ALDERLY, 

PRIMO DIE NOVEMBRIS, ANls^O DOM^ 

1609. de:n^ati vero ibidem vicesimo 
quinto die decembris, anno dom. 

1676, ^TATIS SUiE LXVII. 

Having thus given an account of the most 
remarkable things of his life, I am now to 



SIJl MATTHEW HALE. 79 

present the reader with such a character of 
him as the laying his several virtues together 
will amount to : in which I know how difficult 
a task I undertake, for to write defectively of 
him were to injure him, and lessen the me- 
jnory of one to whom I intend to do all the 
right that is in my power : on the other 
hand, there is so much here to be com- 
mended, and proposed for the imitation of 
others, that I am afraid some may imagine 
I am rather making a picture of him from an 
abstracted idea of great virtues and perfec- 
tions, than setting him out as he truly was : 
but there is great encouragement in this, 
that I write concerning a man so fresh in all 
people's remembrance, that is so lately dead, 
and was so much and so well known, that I 
shall have many vouchers, who will be ready 
to justify me in all that I am to relate, and 
to add a great deal to what I can say. 

It has appeared in the account of his vari- 
ous learning, how great his capacities were, 
and how much they were improved by con- 
stant study : he rose always early in the 
morning ; he loved to walk much abroad, 
not only for his health, but he thought it 
opened his mind, and enlarged his thoughts, 
to have the creation of God before his eyes. 
When he set himself to any study, he used 



80 THE LIFE OF 

to cast his design in a scheme, which he did 
with a great exactness of method ; he took 
nothing on trust, but pursued his inquiries as 
far as they could go ; and as he was humble 
enough to confess his ignorance, and submit 
to mysteries which he could not comprehend, 
so he was not easily imposed on by any 
shows of reason, or the bugbears of vulgar 
opinions : he brought all his knowledge as 
much to scientifical principles as he possibly 
could, which made him neglect the study of 
tongues, for the bent of his mind lay another 
way. Discoursing once of this to some, they 
said, they looked on the common law as a 
study that could not be brought into a 
scheme, nor formed into a rational science, 
by reason of the indigestedness of it, and 
the multiplicity of the cases in it, which 
rendered it very hard to be understood, or 
reduced into a method ; but he said, he was 
not of their mind, and so quickly after he 
drew with his own hand a scheme of the 
whole order and parts of it, in a large sheet 
of paper, to the great satisfaction of those 
to whom he sent it. Upon this hint, some 
pressed him to compile a body of the English 
law : it could hardly ever be done by a man 
who knew it better and would with more 
judgment and industry have put it into me- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 81 

thod ; but he said, as it was a great and 
noble design, which would be of vast advan- 
tage to the nation ; so it was too much for a 
private man to undertake : it was not to be 
entered upon but by the command of a 
prince, and with the communicated endea- 
vours of some of the most eminent of the 
profession. 

He had great vivacity in his fancy, as may 
appear by his inclination to poetry, and the 
lively illustrations and many tender strains in 
his Contemplations ; but he looked on elo- 
quence and wit as things to be used very 
chastely in serious matters, which should come 
under a severer inquiry : therefore he was, 
both when at the bar and on the bench, a 
great enemy to all eloquence or rhetoric in 
pleading: he said, if the judge^or jury had a 
right understanding, it signified nothing but 
a waste of time and loss of words : and if 
they were weak, and easily wrought on, it 
was a more decent way of corrupting them, 
by bribing their fancies, and biassing their 
affections ; and wondered much at that affec- 
tation of the French lawyers in imitating the 
Roman orators in their pleadings. For the 
oratory of the Romans was occasioned by 
their popular government, and the factions of 
the citv, so that those who intended to excel 



82 THE LIFE OF 

in the pleading of causes, were trained up in 
the schools of the rhetors till they became 
ready and expert in that luscious way of dis- 
course. It is true, the composures of such a 
man as TuUy was, who mixed an extraordi- 
nary quickness, and exact judgment, and a 
just decorum with his skill in rhetoric, do still 
entertain the readers of them with great plea- 
sure : but at the same time it must be acknow- 
ledged, that there is not that chastity of style, 
that closeness of reasoning, nor that justness 
of figures in his orations, that is in his other 
writings ; so that a great deal was said by 
him, rather because he knew it would be ac- 
ceptable to his auditors, than that it was ap- 
proved of by himself : and all who read them 
will acknowledge they are better pleased with 
them as essays of wit and style, than as 
pleadings, by which such a judge as ours was 
would not be much wrought on. And, if 
there are such grounds to censure the per- 
formances of the greatest master in eloquence, 
we may easily infer what nauseous discourses 
the other orators made, since in oratory, as 
well as in poetry, none can do indifferently. 
So our judge wondered to find the French, 
that live under a monarchy, so fond of imi- 
tating that which was an ill effect of the po- 
pular government of Rome : he therefore 



SIR MATTHEW HALE, 83 

pleaded himself always in few words, and 
home to the point : and when he was a judge, 
he held those that pleaded before him to be 
the main hinge of the business, and cut them 
short when they made excursions about cir- 
cumstances of no moment, by which he saved 
much time, and made the chief difficulties 
be well stated and cleared. 

There was another custom among the Ro- 
mans, which he as much admired, as he de- 
spised their rhetoric, which was, that the ju- 
risconsults were the men of the highest 
quality, who were bred to be capable of the 
chief employment in the state, and became 
the great masters of their law : these gave 
their opinions of all cases that were put to 
them freely, judging it below them to take 
any present for it ; and indeed they only were 
the true lawyers among them,whose resolutions 
were of that authority, that they made one 
classis of those materials out of which Trebo- 
nian compiled the digests under Justinian ; 
for the orators or causidici that pleaded causes, 
knew little of the law, and only employed 
their mercenary tongues to work on the affec- 
tions of the people and senate, or the pretors : 
even in most of Tully's Orations there is little 
of law : and that little which they might 
sprinkle in their declamations, they had not 



84 THE LIFE OF 

from their own knowledge, but the resolution 
of some jurisconsult ; according to that famous 
story of Servius Sulpitius, who was a cele- 
brated orator, and being to receive the resolu- 
tion of one of those that were learned in the 
law, was so ignorant, that he could not un- 
derstand it ; upon which the jurisconsult re- 
proached him, and said, it was a shame for him 
that was a nobleman, a senator, and a pleader 
of causes, to be thus ignorant of law : this 
touched him so sensibly, that he set about the 
study of it, and became one of the most emi- 
nent jurisconsults that ever were at Rome. 
Our judge thought it might become the great- 
ness of a prince to encourage such a sort of 
men and of studies ; in which, none in the 
age he lived in was equal to the great Selden, 
who was truly in our English law, what the 
old Roman jurisconsults were in theirs. 

But where a decent eloquence was allow- 
able, Judge Hale knew how to have excelled as 
much as any, either in illustrating his reason- 
ings by proper and well pursued similes, or 
by such tender expressions as might work 
most on the affections, so that the present 
lord chancellor has often said of him since his 
death, that he was the greatest orator he had 
known ; for though his words came not fluently 
from him, yet when they were out, they were 



SIR MATTHEW H.\LE. 85 

the most significant and expressive that the 
matter could bear : of this sort there are many 
in his Contemplations, made to quicken his 
own devotion, which have a life in them be- 
coming him that used them, and a softness fit 
to melt even the harshest tempers, accommo- 
dated to the gravity of the subject, and apt 
to excite warm thoughts in the readers ; that 
as they show his excellent temper that brought 
them out and applied them to himself, so 
they are of great use to all who would both 
inform and quicken their minds. Of his 
illustrations of things by proper similes, I 
shall give a large instance out of his book of 
the Origination of Mankind, designed to ex- 
pose the several different hypotheses the phi- 
losophers fell on concerning the eternity and 
original of the universe, and to prefer the ac- 
count given by Moses to all their conjectures; 
in which, if my taste does not misguide me, 
the reader will find a rare and very agreeable 
mixture, both of fine wit, and solid learning 
and judgment. 

^* That which may illustrate my meaning, in 
this preference of the revealed light of the holy 
scriptures, touching this matter, above the 
essays of a philosophical imagination, may be 
this. Suppose that Greece was unacquainted 
with the curiosity of mechanical engineS;, 
I 



B6 THE LIFE OF 

though known in some* remote region of the 
world, and that an excellent artist had secret- 
ly brought and deposited in some iield or 
forest some excellent watch or clock, which 
had been so formed that the original of its 
motion was hidden, and involved in some close 
contrived piece of mechanism ; that this watch 
was so framed^ that the motion thereof might 
have lasted a year, or some such time as 
might give a reasonable period for their phi- 
losophical descanting concerning it ; and that 
in the plain table there had been not only the 
description and indication of hours, but the 
configurations and indications of the various 
phases of the moon, the motion and place of 
the sun in the ecliptic, and divers other cu- 
rious indications of celestial motions ; and that 
the scholars of the several schools, of Epicu- 
rus, of Aristotle, of Plato, and the rest of those 
philosophical sects, had casually in their walk 
found this admirable automaton ; what kind 
of work would there have been made by every 
sect, in giving an account of this phenomenon? 
We should have had the Epicurean sect have 
told the bystanders, according to their pre- 
conceived hypothesis, that this was nothing 
else but an accidental concretion of atoms 
that haply fallen together had made up the 
index, the wheels, and the balance ; and that 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 87 

being haply fallen into this posture, they were 
put into motion. Then the Cartesian falls 
in with him as to the main of their supposition, 
but tells him that he doth not sufficiently ex- 
plicate how the engine is put into motion, and 
therefore to furnish this motion there is a cer- 
tain materia subtilis that pervades this engine ; 
and the moveable parts consisting of several 
globular atoms apt for motion, they are there- 
by^ and by the mobility of the globular atoms, 
put into motion. A third finding fault with 
the two former, because those motions are so 
regular, and do express the various pheno- 
mena of the distribution of time, and of the 
heavenly motions ; therefore it seems to him 
that this engine and motion also, so analogi- 
cal to the motions of the heavens, was wrought 
by some admirable conjunction of the heaven- 
ly bodies, which formed this instrument and 
its motions in such an admirable correspon- 
dency to its own existence. A fourth, dis- 
liking the suppositions of the three former, 
tells the rest that he hath a more plain and 
evident solution of the phenomenon ; namicly, 
The universal soul of the world, or spirit of 
nature, that formed so many sorts of insects 
with so many organs, faculties, and such con- 
gruity of their whole composition, and such 
curious and various motions as we may ob- 



88 THE LIFE OF 

serve in them, hath formed and set into mo- 
tion this admirable automaton, and regulated 
and ordered it with all these oongruities we 
see in it. Then steps in an Aristotelian, and 
being dissatisfied with all the former solu- 
tions, tells them, ' Gentlemen, you are all mis- 
taken, your solutions are inexplicable and un- 
satisfactory ; you have taken up certain preca- 
rious hypotheses, and being prepossessed with 
these creatures of your own fancies, and in love 
with them, right or wrong, you form all your 
conceptions of things according to those fan- 
cied and preconceived imaginations.. The short 
of the business is, this machina is eternal, and 
so are all the motions of it ; and inasmuch as 
a circular motion hath no beginning or end, 
this motion that you see both in the wheels 
and index, and the successive indications of 
the celestial motions, is eternal, and without 
beginning. And this is a ready and expedite 
way of solving the phenomena, without so 
much ado as you have made about it.' 

'^ And whilst ail the masters were thus con- 
triving the solution of the phenomenon in the 
hearing of the artist that made it ; and when 
they had all spent their philosophizing upon 
it, the artist that made this engine, and all 
this while listened to their admirable fancies, 
tells them, * Gentlemen, you have discovered 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 89 

very much excellency of invention touching 
this piece of work that is before you, but you 
are all miserably mistaken : for it v/as 1 that 
made this watch, and brought it hither, and I 
will show you how I made it. First I wrought 
the spring, and the fusee, and^the wheels, and 
the balance, and the case, and table ; I fitted 
them one to another, and placed these several 
axes that are to direct the motions, of the in- 
dex to discover the hour of the day, of the 
figure that discovers the phases of the moon, 
and the other various motions that you see ; 
and then I put it together, and wound up the 
spring which hath given all these motions that 
you see in this curious piece of work ; and 
that you may be sure 1 tell you true, I will tell 
you the whole order and progress of my 
making, disposing, and ordering of this piece 
of work, the several materials of it, the man- 
ner of the forming of every individual part of 
it, and how long I was about it/ This plain 
and evident discovery renders all these exco- 
gitated hypotheses of those philosophical en- 
thusiasts vain and ridiculous, without any 
great help of rhetorical flourishes, or logical 
confutations. And much of the same nature 
is that disparity of the hypotheses of the learn* 
ed philosophers in relation to the origination 
of the world and man, after a great deal of 
I 3 



^0 THE LIFE OF 

dust raised, and fanciful explications and un- 
intelligible hypotheses. The plain but Di- 
vine narrative by the hand of Moses, full of 
sense, and congruity^ and clearness, and rea- 
sonableness in itself, does at the same moment 
give us a true and clear discovery of this great 
mystery, and renders all the essays of the 
generality of the heathen philosophers to be 
vain, inevident, and indeed inexplicable the- 
ories, the creatures of phantasy and imagina- 
tion, and nothing else/^ 

As for his virtues, they have appeared so 
conspicuous in all the several transactions and 
turns of his life, that it may seem needless to 
add any more of them than has been already 
related ; but there are many particular in- 
stances which I knew not how to fit to the 
several years of his life, which will give us a 
clearer and better view of him. 

He was a devout Christian, a sincere Pro- 
testant, and a true son of the church of Eng- 
land ; moderate towards dissenters, and just 
even to those from whom he differed most; 
which appeared signally in the care he took 
of preserving the Quakers from that mischief 
that was like to fall on them by declaring 
their marriages void, and so bastarding their 
children ; but he considered marriage and 
.succession as a right of nature, from which 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 91 

none ought to be barred, what mistake soever 
they might be under in the points of revealed 
religion. 

And therefore in a trial that was before 
him, when a Quaker was sued for some debts 
owing by his wife before he married her, and 
the Quaker's counsel pretended, that it was 
no marriage that had passed between them, 
since it was not solemnized according to the 
rules of the church of England ; he declared, 
that he was not willing on his own opinion to 
make their children bastards, and gave direc- 
tions to the jury to find it special. It was a 
reflection on the whole party, that one of them, 
to avoid an inconvenience he had fallen in, 
thought to have preserved himself by a de- 
fence, that, if it had been allowed in law, 
must have made their whole issue bastards, 
and incapable of succession ; and for all their 
pretended friendship to one another, if this 
judge had not been more their friend than one 
of those they so called, their posterity had 
been little beholden to them. But he governed 
himself indeed by the law of the Gospel, of 
doing to others what he would have others do 
to him ; and therefore, because he would have 
thought it a hardship not without cruelty, if 
amongst papists all marriages were nulled 
which had not been made with all the cere- 



. . J 



92 THE LIFE OF 

monies in the Roman ritual, so he, applying 
this to the case of the sectaries, thought all 
marriages, made according to the several per- 
suasions of men, ought to have their effects in 
law. 

He used constantly to worship God in his 
family, performing it always himself, if there 
was no clergyman present. But, as to his 
private exercises in devotion, he took that 
extraordinary care to keep what he did secret, 
that this part of his character must be defec- 
tive, except it be acknowledged that his 
humility in covering it commends him much 
more than the highest expressions of devotion 
could have done. 

From the first time that the impressions of 
religion settled deeply in his mind, he used 
great caution to conceal it; not only in obe- 
dience to the rules given by our Saviour of 
fasting, prayings and giving alms in secret ; 
but from a particular distrust he had of him- 
self, for he said he was afraid he should at 
some time or other do some enormous thing, 
which, if he were looked on as a very religious 
man, might cast a reproach on the profession 
of it, and give great advantages to impious 
men to blaspheme the name of God : but a 
tree is known by its fruits ; and he lived not 
only free from blemishes or scandal, but 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. ,93 

shined in all the parts of his conversation. 
And perhaps the distrust he was in of himself 
contributed not a little to the purity of his 
life ; for he being thereby obliged to be more 
watchful over himself, and to depend more on 
the aids of the Spirit of God, no wonder if 
that humble temper produced those excellent 
effects in him. 

He had a soul enlarged and raised above 
that mean appetite of loving money, which is 
generally the root of all evil. He did not take 
the profits that he might have had by his 
practice ; for in common cases, when those 
who came to ask his counsel gave him a 
piece, he used to give back the half, and so 
made ten shillings his fee, in ordinary matters 
that did not require much time or study : if 
he saw a cause was unjust, he for a great 
while would not meddle further in it, but to 
give his advice that it was so ; if the parties, 
after that, would go on, they were to seek 
another counsellor, for he would assist none 
in acts of injustice : if he found the cause 
doubtful or weak in point of law, he always 
advised his clients to agree their business : 
yet afterwards he abated much of the scrupu- 
losity he had about causes that appeared at 
first view unjust, upon this occasion : there 
were two causes brought to him^ which by the 



94 THE LIFE OF 

ignorance of the party or their attorney, were 
so ill represented to him, that they seemed to 
be very bad, but he inquiring more narrowly 
into them, found they were really very good 
and just ; so after this he slackened much of 
his former strictness, of refusing to meddle in 
causes upon the ill circumstances that ap- 
peared in them at first. 

In his pleading he abhorred those too com- 
m-on faults of misreciting evidences, quoting 
precedents, or books falsely, or asserting things 
confidently ; by which ignorant juries^ or weak 
judges, are too often wrought on. He pleaded 
with the same sincerity that he used in the 
other parts of his life, and used to say it was 
as great a dishonour as a man was capable of, 
that for a little money he was to be hired to 
say or do otherwise than as he thought : all 
this he ascribed to the unmeasurable desire of 
heaping up wealth, which corrupted the souls 
of some that seemed to be otherwise born and 
made for great things. 

When he was a practitioner, differences 
were often referred to him, which he settled, 
but would accept of no reward for his pains, 
though offered by both parties together, after 
the agreement was made ; for he said in those 
cases he was made a judge, and a judge ought 
to take no money. If they told him, he lost 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 95 

much of his time in considering their busi- 
ness, and so ought to be acknowledged for 
it; his answer was, as one that heard it told 
me, *^ Can I spend my time better, than to 
make people friends ? Must I have no time 
allowed me to do good in V^ 

He was naturally a quick man, yet by much 
practice on himself, he subdued that to such 
a degree, that he would never run suddenly 
into any conclusion concerning any matter 
of importance. Festina lente was his beloved 
motto, which he ordered to be engraven on 
the head of his staff, and was often heard say 
that he had observed many witty men run 
into great errors, because they did not give 
themselves time to think, but the heat of ima- 
gination making some notions appear in good 
colours to them, they without staying till that 
cooled, were violently led by the impulses it 
made on them, whereas calm and slow men, 
who pass for dull in the common estimation, 
could search after truth and find it out, as 
with more deliberation, so with greater cer- 
tainty. 

He laid aside the tenth penny of all he got 
for the poor, and took great care to be well 
informed of proper objects for his charities ; 
and after he was a judge, many of the perqui- 
sites of his place, as his dividend of the rule 



96 THE LIFE OF 

and box-money, were sent by him to the gaols 
to discharge poor prisoners, who never knew 
from whose hands their relief came. It is also 
a custom for the marshal of the King's Bench 
to present the judges of that court with a 
piece of plate for a new year's gift, that for 
the Chief Justice being larger than the rest : 
this he intended to have refused, but the other 
judges told him it belonged to his office, and 
the refusing it would be a prejudice to his 
successors, so he was persuaded to take it, 
but he sent word to the marshal, that instead 
of plate, he should bring him the value of it 
in money, and when he received it, he imme- 
diately sent it to the prisons, for the relief 
and discharge of the poor there. He usually 
invited his poor neighbours to dine with him, 
and made them sit at table with himself: and 
if any of them were sick, so that they could 
not come, he would send meat warm to them 
from his table : and he did not only relieve the 
poor in his own parish, but sent supplies to 
the neighbouring parishes, as there was occa- 
sion for it : and he treated them all with the 
tenderness and familiarity that became one, 
w^ho considered they were of the same nature 
with himself, and were reduced to no other 
necessities but such as he himself might be 
^Drought to '. but for common beggars, if any 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 97 

of these came to him, as he was in his walks, 
when he lived in the country, he would ask 
such as were capable of working, why they 
went about so idly ; if they answered, it was 
because they could find no work, he often sent 
them to some fields to gather all the stones in 
it, and lay them on a heap, and then would 
pay them liberally for their pains : this being 
done, he used to send his carts, and caused 
them to be carried to such places of the high- 
way as needed mending. 

But w^hen he was in town, he dealt his cha- 
rities very liberally, even among the street 
beggars, and when some told him, that be 
thereby encouraged idleness, and that most 
of these were notorious cheats, he used to 
answer, that he believed most of them were 
such, but among them there were some that 
were great objects of charity, and pressed 
with grievous necessities ; and that he had 
rather give his ahns to twenty who might be 
perhaps rogues, than that one of the other 
sort should perish for want of that small relief 
which he gave them. 

He loved building much, which he affected 
chiefly because it employed many poor peo- 
ple; but one thing was observed in all his 
buildings, that the change he made in his 
houses was always from magnificence to use- 

K 



98 THE lifp: of 

fulness ; for he avoided every thing that looked 
like pomp or vanity, even in the walls of his 
houses; he had good judgment in architec- 
ture, and an excellent faculty in contriving 
w^ell. 

He was a gentle landlord to all his tenants, 
and was ever ready, upon any reasonable 
complaints, to make abatements ; for he was 
merciful as well as righteous. One instance 
of this was, of a widow that lived in London, 
and had a small estate near his house in the 
country, from which her rents were ill return- 
ed to her, and at a cost which she could not 
well bear ; so she bemoaned herself to him, 
and he, according to his readiness to assist 
all poor people, told her he would order his 
steward to take up her rents, and the return- 
ing them should cost her nothing. But after 
that, when there was a falling of rents in that 
country, so that it was necessary to make 
abatements to the tenant, yet he would have 
it to lie on himself, and made the widow be 
paid her rent as formerly. 

Another remarkable instance of his justice 
and goodness was, that when he found ill 
money had been put into his hands, he would 
never suffer it to be vented again, for he 
thought it was no excuse for him to put false 
money in other people's hands because some 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 99 

had put it in his : a great heap of this he had 
gathered together, for many had so far abused 
his goodness as to mix base money among 
the fees that were given him. It is likely he 
intended to have destroyed it, but some 
thieves who had observed it broke into his 
chamber and stole it, thinking they had got 
a prize ; which he used to tell with some 
pleasure, imagining how they found them- 
selves deceived when they perceived what sort 
of booty they had fallen on. 

After he was made a judge, he would needs 
pay more for every purchase he made than it 
was worth ; if it had been but a horse he was 
to buy, he would outbid the price : and when 
some represented to him that he made. ill bar- 
gains, he said, it became judges to pay more " 
for what they bought than the true value, 
that so those with whom they dealt, might 
not think they had any right to their favour, 
by having sold such things to them at an 
easy rate ; and said it was suitable to the re- 
putation which a judge ought to preserve to 
make such bargains, that the world might see 
they were not too well used upon some secret 
account. 

In SLim, his estate did show how little he 
had minded the raising a great fortune ; for 
from a hundred pounds a year, he raised it 



iOO THE LIFE OF 

not quite to nine hundred, and of this a very 
considerable part came in by his share of 
Mr. Selden's estate ; yet this, considering his 
great practice while a counsellor, and his con- 
stant frugal and modest way of living, was 
but a small fortune. In the share that fell 
to him by Mr. Selden's will, one memorable 
thing was done by him with the other execu- 
tors, by which they both showed their regard 
to their dead friend, and their love of the 
public. His library was valued at some 
thousands of pounds, and was believed to be 
one of the most curious collections in Europe ; 
so they resolved to keep this entire for the 
honour of Selden's memory, and gave it to 
the University of Oxford, where a noble room 
was added to the former library for its recep- 
tion ; and all due respects have been since 
showed by that great and learned body to 
those their worthy benefactors, who not only 
parted so generously with this great treasure, 
but were a little put to it how to oblige them 
without crossing the will of their dead friend. 
Mr. Selden had once intended to give his 
library to that university, and had left it so by 
his will ; but, having occasion for a manuscript 
which belonged to their library, they asked of 
him a bond of a thousand pounds for its res- 
titution ; this he took so ill at their hands, 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 101 

that he struck out that part of his will by 
which he had given them his library, and 
with some passion declared they should never 
have it. The executors stuck at this a little, 
but, having considered better of it, came to 
this resolution : that they were to be the ex- 
ecutors of Mr. Selden's will, and not of his 
passion ; so they made good what he had in- 
tended in cold blood, and passed over what 
his passion had suggested to him. 

The parting with so many excellent books 
would have been as uneasy to our judge as 
any thing of that nature could be^ if a pious 
regard to his friend's memory had not pre- 
vailed over him, for he valued books and 
manuscripts above all things in the world : 
he himself had made a great and rare collec- 
tion of manuscripts belonging to the law of 
England ; he was forty years in gathering it ; 
he himself said it cost him about fifteen hun- 
dred pounds, and calls it, in his will, a trea- 
sure worth having and keeping, and not fit 
for every man's view. These all he left to 
Lincoln's-inn ; and for the information of 
those who are curious to search into such 
things^ there shall be a catalogue of them add- 
ed at the end of this book. 

By all these instances it does appear how 
much he was raised above the worlds or the 
K 3 



102 THE LIFE OF 

love of it. But having thus mastered things 
without him, his next study was to overcome 
his own inclinations. He was, as he said 
himself, naturally passionate ; I add, as he 
vsaid himself, for that appeared by no other 
evidence, save that sometimes his colour would 
rise a little ; but he so governed himself, that 
those who lived long about him have told me, 
they never saw him disordered with anger^ 
though he met with some trials that the 
nature of man is as little able to bear as any 
whatsoever. There was one who did him a 
great injury, which it is not necessary to 
mention, who coming afterwards to him for 
his advice in the settlement of his estate, he 
gave it very frankly to him, but would accept 
of no fee for it, and thereby showed both that 
he could forgive as a Christian, and that he 
had the soul of a gentleman in him, not to 
take money of one that had wronged him so 
heinously. And when he was asked by one 
how he could use a man so kindly that had 
wronged him so much, his answer was, he 
thanked God he had learned to forget inju- 
ries. And besides the great temper he ex- 
pressed in all his public employments, in his 
family he was a very gentle master : he was 
tender of all his servants, he never turned 
any away except they were so faulty that 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 103 

there was no hope of reclaiming them : when 
any of them had been long out of the way, 
or had neglected any part of their duty, he 
would not see them at their first coming 
home, and sometimes not till the next day, 
lest, when his displeasure was qnick upon 
him, he might have chid them indecently ; 
and when he did reprove them, he did it with 
that sweetness and gravity, that it appeared 
he was more concerned for their having done 
a fault, than for the offence given by it to 
himself: but if they became immoral or un- 
ruly, then he turned them away, for he said, 
he that by his place ought to punish disorders 
in other people, must by no means suffer 
them in his own house. He advanced his 
servants according to the time they had been 
about him, and w^ould never give occasion to 
envy among them, by raising the younger 
clerks above those w^ho had been longer with 
him. He treated them all with great affec- 
tion, rather as a friend than a master^ giving 
them often good advice and instruction. He 
made those who had good places under him 
give some of their profits to the other ser- 
vants, w4io had nothing but their wages. 
When he made his will, he left legacies to 
every one of them ; but he expressed a more 
particular kindness for Qiie of them, Robert 



104 THE LIFE OF 

Gibbon, of the Middle Temple^ Esq. inr^hom 
he had that confidence that he left him one 
of his executors. I the rather mention him, 
because of his noble gratitude to his worthy 
benefactor and master, for he has been so 
careful to preserve his memory, that as he 
set those on me at whose desire I undertook 
to write his life, so he has procured for me a 
great part of those memorials and informa- 
tions out of which I have composed it. 

The judge was of a most tender and com- 
passionate nature ; this did eminently appear 
in his trying and giving sentence upon crimi- 
nals, in which he was strictly careful that not 
a circumstance should be neglected which 
might any way clear the fact: he behaved 
himself with that regard to the prisoners, 
which became both the gravity of a judge, 
and the pity that was due to men whose lives 
lay at stake, so that nothing of jeering or un- 
reasonable severity ever fell from him. He 
also examined the witnesses in the softest 
manner, taking care that they should be put 
under no confusion which might disorder 
their memory : and he summed all the evi- 
dence so equally when he charged the jury, 
that the criminals themselves never complain- 
ed of him. When it came to him to give 
sentence, he did it with that composedness 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 105 

and decency, and his speeches to the prison- 
ers, directing them to prepare for death, were 
so weighty, so free from all affectation, and so 
serious and devout, that many loved to go to 
the trials when he sat judge, to be edified by 
his speeches and behaviour in them ; and used 
to say, they heard very few such sermons. 

But though the pronouncing the sentence 
of death was the piece of his employment 
that went most against the grain with him ; 
yet in that he could never be mollified to any 
tenderness which hindered justice. When 
he was once pressed to recommend some, 
whom he had condemned, to his majesty's 
mercy and pardon ; he answered, he could 
not think they deserved a pardon, whom he 
himself had adjudged to die : so that all he 
would do in that kind was to give the King 
a true account of the circumstances of the 
fact; after which his majesty was to consider 
whether he would interpose his mercy, or let 
justice take place. 

His mercifulness extended even to his 
beasts : for when the horses that he had kept 
long grew old, he would not suffer them to be 
sold, or much wrought, but ordered his men to 
turn them loose on his grounds, and put them 
only to easy work, such as going to market 
and the like : he used old doo:s also with the 



106 THE LIFE OF 

same care ; his shepherd having one that wa« 
become blind with age, he intended to have 
killed or lost him, but the judge coming to 
hear of it, made one of his servants bring him 
home, and fed him till he died : and he was 
scarce ever seen more angry than with one of 
his servants for neglecting a bird that he kept, 
so that it died for want of food. 

He was a great encourager of all young per- 
sons that he saw followed their books diligent- 
ly ; to whom he used to give directions con- 
cerning the method of their study, with a hu- 
manity and sweetness that wrought much on 
all that came near him : and in a smiling 
pleasant way he would admonish them if he 
saw any thing amiss in them ; particularly, if 
they went too fine in their clothes, he would 
tell them it did not become their profession. 
He was not pleased to see students wear long 
periwigs, or attorneys go with swords ; so thkt 
such young men as would not be persuaded 
to part with those vanities, when they went to 
him laid them aside, and went as plain as 
they could, to avoid the reproof which they 
knew they might otherwise expect. 

He was very free and communicative in his 
discourse, which he most commonly fixed on 
some good and useful subject, and loved for 
an hour or two at night to be visited by some 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 107 

of his friends. He neither said nor did any 
thing with affectation, but used a simplicity 
that was both natural to himself and very 
easy to others. And though he never studied 
the modes of civility or court breeding, yet 
he knew not what it was to be rude or harsh 
with any, except he were impertinently ad- 
dressed to in matters of justice ; then he 
would raise his voice a little, and so shake off 
those importunities. 

In his furniture, and the service of his 
table, and way of living, he liked the old 
plainness so well, that as he would set up none 
of the new fashions, so he rather affected a 
coarseness in the use of the old ones : which 
was more the effect of his philosophy than 
disposition, for he loved fine things too much 
at first : he was always of an equal temper^ 
rather cheerful than merry. Many wonder- 
ed to see the evenness of his deportment in 
some very sad passages of his life. 

Having lost one of his sons, the manner of 
whose death had some grievous circumstances 
in it ; one coming to see him and condole, he 
said to him, those were the effects of living 
long, such must look to see many sad and 
unacceptable things ; and having said that^ 
he went to other discourses with his ordinary 
freedom of mind ; for though he had a tern- 



108 THE LIFE OF 

per so tender that sad things were apt enough 
to make deep impressions upon him, yet the 
regard he had to the wisdom and providence 
of God, and the just estimate he made of all 
external things, did to admiration maintain 
the tranquillity of his mind ; and he gave no 
occasion by idleness to melancholy to corrupt 
his spirit, but by the perpetual bent of his 
thoughts, he knew well how to divert them 
from being oppressed with the excesses of 
sorrow. 

He had a generous and noble idea of God 
in his mind, and this he found did above all 
other considerations preserve his quiet : and 
indeed that was so well established in him, 
that no accidents, how sudden soever, were 
observed to discompose him: of which an 
eminent man of that profession gave me this 
instance. In the year 1666, an opinion did 
run through the nation that the end of the 
world would come that year : this, whether 
set on by astrologers^, or advanced by those 
who thought it might have some relation to 
the number of the beast in the Revelation, or 
promoted by men of ill designs to disturb the 
public peace, had spread mightily among the 
people ; and Judge Hale going that year the 
western circuit, it happened that as he was on 
the bench at the assizes, a most terrible storm 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 109 

fell out very unexpectedly, accompanied with 
such flashes of lightning, and claps of thunder, 
that the like will hardly fall out in an age ; 
upon which a whisper or rumour ran through 
the crowd, that now was the world to end, 
and the day of judgment to begin, and at 
this there followed a general consternation in 
the whole assembly, and all men forgot the 
business they were met about, and betook 
themselves to their prayers : this added to 
the horror raised by the storm looked very dis- 
mally ; insomuch that my author, a man of 
no ordinary resolution and firmness of mind, 
confessed it made a great impression on him- 
self. But he told me, that he did observe the 
judge was not a whit affected, and was going 
on with the business of the court in his ordi- 
nary manner ; from which he made this con- 
clusion, that his thoughts were so well fixed, 
that he believed if the world had been really 
to end, it would have given him no consider- 
able disturbance. 

But I shall now conclude all that I shall say 
concerning him, with what one of the greatest 
men of the profession of the law sent me as 
an abstract of the character he had made of 
him, upon long observation and much con- 
verse with him : it was sent me, that from 
thence, with the other materials, I miorht make 



1)0 THE LIFE OF 

such a representation of him to the world as 
he indeed deserved, but I resolved not to shred 
it out in parcels, but to set it down entirely 
as it was sent me ; hoping that as the reader 
will be much delighted with it, so the noble 
person that sent it will not be offended with 
me for keeping it entire, and setting it in the 
best light I could ; it begins abruptly, being 
designed to supply the defects of others, from 
whom I had earlier and more copious infor- 
mations. 

*^ He would never be brought to discourse 
of public matters in private conversation but 
in questions of law ; when any young lawyer 
put a case to him, he was very communicative, 
especially w^hile he was at the bar ; but when 
he came to the bench, he grew more reserved^ 
and would never suffer his opinion in any case 
to be known till he was obliged to declare it 
judicially ; and he concealed his opinion in 
great cases so carefully, that the rest of the 
judges in the same court could never perceive 
it : his reason was, because every judge ought 
to give sentence according to his own persua- 
sion and conscience, and not to be swayed by 
any respect or deference to another man's 
opinion : and by this means it hath happened 
sometimes, that when all the barons of the 
exchequer had delivered their opinions, and 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. Ill 

agreed in their reasons and arguments ; yet 
he coming to speak last, and differing in judg- 
ment from them, hath expressed himself with 
so much weight and solidity, that the barons 
have immediately retracted their votes and 
concurred with him. He hath sat as a judge 
in all the courts of law, and in two of them 
as chief; but still wherever he sat^ all business 
of consequence followed him, and no man 
was content to sit down by the judgment of any 
other court, till the case were brought before 
him, to see whether he were of the same mind ; 
and his opinion being once known, men did 
readily acquiesce in it ; and it was very rarely 
seen that any man attempted to bring it about 
again, and he that did so, did it upon great 
disadvantages, and was always looked upon 
as a very contentious person ; so that what 
Cicero says of Brutus, did very often happen 
to him, Etiam quos contra statuit cequos placa- 
tosque dimisit. 

^' Nor did men reverence his judgment and 
opinion in courts of law only ; but his autho- 
rity was as great in courts of equity, and the 
same respect and submission was paid to him 
there too ; and this appeared not only in his 
own court of equity in the exchequer cham- 
ber, but in the chancery too, for thither he 
was often called to advise and assist the lord 



112 THE LIFE OF 

chancellor, or lord keeper for the time be- 
ing ; and if the cause were of difficult exa- 
mination, or intricated and entangled with 
variety of settlements, no man ever showed a 
more clear and discerning judgment. If it 
were of great value, and great persons inte- 
rested in it, no man ever showed greater cou- 
rage and integrity in laying aside all respect 
of persons. When he came to deliver his 
opinion, he always put his discourse into 
such a method, that one part of it gave light 
to the other ; and where the proceedings of 
chancery might prove inconvenient to the 
subject, he never spared to observe and re- 
prove them. And from his observations and 
discourses, the chancery hath taken occasion 
to establish many of those rules by which it 
governs itself at this day. 

*^^ He did look upon equity as a part of 
the common law, and one of the grounds of 
it ; and therefore, as near as he could, he 
did always reduce it to certain rules and 
principles, that men might study it as a sci- 
ence, and not think the administration of it 
had any thing arbitrary in it. Thus eminent 
was this man in every station^ and into what 
court soever he was called, he quickly made 
it appear that he deserved the chief seat 
there. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 113 

*' As great a lawyer as he was, he would 
never suffer the strictness of law to prevail 
against conscience; as great a chancellor as 
he was, he would make use of all the nice- 
ties and subtilties in law, when it tended to 
support right and equity. But nothing was 
more admirable in him than his patience. 
He did not affect the reputation of quick- 
ness and despatch by a hasty and captious 
hearing of the counsel : he would bear with 
the meanest, and gave every man his full 
scope, thinking it much better to lose time 
than patience. In summing up of an evi- 
dence to a jury, he would always require the 
bar to interrupt him if he did mistake, and 
to put him in mind of it if he did forget the 
least circumstance. Some judges have been 
disturbed at this as rudeness, which he al- 
ways looked upon as a service and respect 
done to him. 

'^ His whole life was nothing else but a 
continual course of labour and industry ; and 
when he could borrow any time from the 
public service, it was wholly employed either 
in philosophical or divine meditations^ and 
even that was a public service too, as it hath 
proved ; for they have occasioned his writing 
of such treatises, as are become the choicest 
entertainment of wise and good men, and the 
L 3 



114 THE LIFE OF 

world hath reason to wish that more of them 
were printed. He that considers the active 
part of his life, and with what unwearied 
diligence and application of mind he des- 
patched all men's business which came under 
his care, will wonder how he could find any 
time for contemplation. He tliat considers 
again the various studies he passed through, 
and the many collections and observations he 
hath made, may as justly wonder how he 
could find any time for action. But no man 
can wonder at the exemplary piety and inno- 
cence of such a life so spent as this was, 
wherein as he was careful to avoid every idle 
word, so it is manifest he never spent an idle 
day. They who come far short of this great 
man, will be apt enough to think that this is 
a panegyric, which indeed is a history, and 
but a little part of that history which was 
with great truth to be related of him : men 
who despair of attaining such perfection, are 
not willing to believe that any man else did 
ever arrive at such a height. 

"He was the greatest lawyer of the age, 
and might have had what practice he pleased ; 
but though he did most conscientiously affect 
the labours of his profession, yet at the same 
time he despised the gain of it ; and of those 
profits which he would allow himself to re- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. llo 

ceive, he always set apart a tenth penny for 
the poor, which he ever dispensed with that 
secrecy, that they who were relieved seldom 
or never knew their benefactor. He took 
more pains to avoid the honours and prefer- 
ments of the gown, than others do to com- 
pass them. His modesty was beyond all ex- 
ample, for where some men who never attain- 
ed to half his knowledge, have been puffed 
up with a high conceit of themselves, and 
have affected all occasions of raising their 
own esteem by depreciating other men, he, 
on the contrary, was the most obliging man 
that ever practised. If a young gentleman 
happened to be retained to argue a point in 
law, where he was on the contrary side, he 
would very often mend the objections when 
he came to repeat them, and always com- 
mend the gentleman if there were room for it, 
and one good word of his was of more advan- 
tage to a young man than all the favour of 
the court could be.'' 

Having thus far pursued his history and 
character in the public and exemplary parts 
of his life, without interrupting the thread of 
the relation with what was private and do- 
mestic, I shall conclude with a short account 
of these. 

He was twice married ; his first v/ife was 



116 THE LIFE OF 

Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Moore, of Faly 
in Berkshire J grandchild to Sir Francis Moore, 
Serjeant at law. By her he had ten children ; 
the four first died young, the other six lived 
to be all married ; and he outlived them all, 
except his eldest daughter and his youngest 
son, who are yet alive. 

His eldest son, Robert, married Frances, 
the daughter of Sir Francis Chock, of Aving- 
ton in Berkshire ; and they both dying in a 
little time one after another, left five children, 
two sons, Matthew and Gabriel, and three 
daughters, Anne, Mary, and Frances ; and by 
the judge's advice, they both made him their 
executor ; so he took his grandchildren into 
his own care, and among them he left his 
estate. 

His second son, Matthew, married Anne, 
the daughter of Mr. Matthew Simmonds, of 
Hilsley in Gloucestershire, who died soon 
after, and left one son behind him, named 
Matthew. 

His third son, Thomas, married Rebecca, 
the daughter of Christian Le Brune, a Dutch 
merchant, and died without issue. 

His fourth son, Edward, married Mary, the 
daughter of Edmund Goodyere, Esq. of Hey- 
thorp in Oxfordshire, and still lives ; he has 
two sons and three daughters. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 117 

His eldest daughter, Mary, was married to 
Edward Alderley, son of Edward Alderley, of 
Innisliannon in the county of Cork, in Ireland, 
who dying left her with two sons and three 
daughters. She is since married to Edward 
Stephens, son to Edward Stephens, Esq. of 
Cherington in Gloucestershire. 

His youngest daughter, Elizabeth, was mar- 
ried to Edward Webb, Esq. barrister at law ; 
she died, leaving two children, a son and a 
daughter. 

His second wife was Anne, the daughter of 
Mr. Joseph Bishop, of Faly in Berkshire, by 
whom he had no children. He gives her a 
great character in his will, as a most dutiful, 
faithful, and loving wife, and therefore trusted 
the breeding of his grandchildren to her care, 
and left her one of his executors, to whom he 
joined Sir Robert Jenkinson and Mr. Gibbon. 
So much may suffice of those descended from 
him. 

In after-times it is not to be doubted but it 
will be reckoned no small honour to derive 
from him ; and this has made me more par- 
ticular in reckoning up his issue. I shall next 
give an account of the issues of his mind, 
his books, that are either printed, or remain 
in manuscript ; for the last of these, by his 
will he has forbid the printing of any of them 



118 THE LIFE OF 

after his death, except such as he should give 
order for in his life. But he seems to have 
changed his mind afterwards, and to have 
left it to the discretion of his executors which 
of them might be printed ; for though he 
does not express that, yet he ordered by a co- 
dicil, '* that if any book of his writing, as 
well touching the common law as other sub- 
jects, should be printed ; then, what should 
be given for the consideration of the copy, 
should be divided into ten shares, of which he 
appointed seven to go among his servants, 
and three to those who had copied them out 
and were to look after the impression/' The 
reason, as I have understood it, that made 
him so unwilling to have any of his works 
printed after his death was, that he appre- 
hended in the licensing them, which was ne- 
cessary, before any book could be lawfully 
printed, by a law then in force, but since his 
death determined, some things might have 
been struck out or altered : which he had 
observed, not without some indignation, had 
been done to a part of the Reports of one 
whom he had much esteemed. 

" This in matters of law,'' he said, '' might 
prove to be of such mischievous consequence, 
that he thereupon resolved none of his writ- 
ings should be at the mercy of licensers;" 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 119 

and therefore, because he was not sure that 
they should be pubHshed without expurgations 
or interpolations, he forbad the printing of 
any of them ; in which he afterwards made 
some alteration, at least he gave occasion by 
his codicil to infer that he altered his mind. 

This I have the more fully explained, that 
his last will may be no way misunderstood ; 
and that his worthy executors, and his hopeful 
grandchildren, may not conclude themselves 
to be under an indispensable obligation of de- 
priving the public of his excellent writings.* 

Thus lived and died Sir Matthew Hale, the 
renowned Lord Chief Justice of England, 
He had one of the blessings of virtue in the 
highest measure of any of the age, that does 
not always follow it, which was, that he was 
universally much valued and admired by men 
of all sides and persuasions. For as none 
could hate him but for his justice and vir- 
tues, so the great estimation he was generally 
in, made, that few durst undertake to defend 
so ungrateful a paradox, as any thing said to 
lessen him would have appeared to be. His 
name is scarcely ever mentioned since his 
death, without particular accents of singular 
respect. His opinion in points of law gene- 

* Dr. Burnet here gives a list of his works, for a 
corrected account of which see a subsequent page. 



120 THE LIFE OF 

rally passes as an uncontrollable authority, 
and is often pleaded in all the courts of jus- 
tice. And all that knew him well, do still 
speak of him as one of the most perfect pat- 
terns of religion and virtue they ever saw. 

The commendations given him by all sorts 
of people are such, that 1 can hardly come 
under the censures of this age for any thing 
I have said concerning him ; yet if this book 
lives to after-timeS; it will be looked on per- 
haps as a picture, drawn more according to 
fancy and invention, than after the life, if it 
were not that those who knew him well, esta- 
blishing its credit in the present age, will 
make it pass down to the next with a clearer 
authority. 

I shall pursue his praise no further in my 
own words, but shall add what the present 
lord chancellor of England, Sir Heneage 
Finch, said concerning him, when he deliver- 
ed the commission to Lord Chief Justice 
Rainsford, who succeeded him in that office, 
which he began in this manner : 

" The vacancy of the seat of the chief 
justice of this court, and that by a way and 
means so unusual as the resignation of him 
that lately held it, and this too proceeding 
from so deplorable a cause as the infirmity of 
that body which began to forsake the ablest 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 121 

mind that ever presided here, hath filled the 
kingdom with lamentations, and given the 
King many and pensive thoughts how to 
supply that vacancy again." And a little 
after, speaking to his successor, he said, 
*' The very labours of the place, and that 
weight and fatigue of business which attends 
it, are no small discouragements ; for what 
shoulders may not justly fear that burthen 
which made him stoop that went before you ? 
Yet I confess you have a greater discourager 
merit than the mere burthen of your place, 
and that is^ the inimitable example of your 
last predecessor : ' Onerosum est succedere bono 
principi/ was the saying of him in the pane- 
gyric ; and you will find it so too that are to 
succeed such a chief justice, of so indefatiga- 
ble an industry, so invincible a^patience, so 
exemplary an integrity, and so magnanimous 
a contempt of worldly things, without which 
no man can be truly great ; and to all this a 
man that was so absolute a master of the 
science of the law, and even of the most 
abstruse and hidden parts of it, that one may 
truly say of his knowledge in the law, what 
St. Austin said of St. Hierom's knowledge in 
divinity, ' Quod Hieroiiimus nescivif^ nullus 
mortalium iinquam scivitJ And therefore the 
King would not suffer himself to part with so 



122 THE LIFE OF 

great a man, till he had placed upon him all 
the marks of bounty and esteem which his 
retired and weak condition was capable of/' 

To this high character, in which the ex- 
pressions, as they well become the eloquence 
of him who pronounced them, so they do 
agree exactly to the subject, without the 
abatements that are often to be made for 
rhetoric, I shall add that part of the lord 
chief justice's answer, in which he speaks of 
his predecessor. 

" A person in whom his eminent virtues 
and deep learning have long managed a 
contest for the superiority, which is not de- 
cided to this day, nor will it ever be deter- 
mined, I suppose, which shall get the upper 
hand. A person that has sat in this court 
these many years, of whose actions there I 
have been an eye and ear witness, that by the 
greatness of his learning always charmed his 
auditors to reverence and attention : a per- 
son, of whom I think I may boldly say, that 
as former times cannot show any superior to 
him, so I am confident succeeding and future 
time will never show any equal. These con- 
siderations, heightened by what I have heard 
from your Lordship concerning him, made 
me anxious and doubtful, and put me to a 
stand how I should succeed so able, so good, 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 123 

and so great a man. It doth very much 
trouble me that I, who in comparison of him 
am but like a candle lighted in the sunshine, 
or like a glowworm at mid-day, should suc- 
ceed so great a person, that is and will be so 
eminently famous to all posterity ; and 1 
must ever wear this motto in my breast to 
comfort me, and in my actions to excuse 
me — 

'Sequitur, quamvis non passibus sequis."' 

Thus were panegyrics made upon him while 
yet alive, in that same court of justice which 
he had so worthily governed. As he was 
honoured while he lived, so he was much la- 
mented when he died ; and this will still be 
acknowledged as a just inscription for his me- 
mory, though his modesty forbad any such to 
be put on his tomb-stone : 

THAT HE WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST 
PATTERNS THIS AGE HAS AFFORDED, WHE- 
THER IN HIS PRIVATE DEPORTMENT AS A 
CHRISTIAN, OR IN HIS PUBLIC EMPLOY- 
MENTS, EITHER AT THE BAR OR ON THE 
BENCH. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES 

OF THE 

LIFE AND DEATH 

or 

SIR MATTHEW HALE, 

WRITTEN BY RICHARD BAXTER, AT THE REQUEST 
OF EDW. STEPHENS, ESQ. PUBLISHER OF HIS 
CONTEMPLATIONS AND HIS FAMILIAR FRIEND. 

Since the history of Judge Hale's life is 
published, written by Dr. Burnet very well, some 
men have thought, that because my familiarity 
with him was known, and the last time of a 
man's life is supposed to contain his maturest 
judgment, time, study, and experience cor- 
recting former oversights; and this great 
man who was most diligently and thirstily 
learning to the last, was like to be still wiser ; 
the notice that I had of him in the latter years 
of his life should not be omitted. 

I was never acquainted with him till 1667, 
and therefore have nothing to say of the 
former part of his life ; nor of the latter, as 
to any public affairs, but only of what our fa- 



SIR MATTHKW HALE. 125 

miliar converse acquainted me : but the visible 
effects made me wonder at the industry and un- 
wearied labours of his former life. Besides the 
four volumes against atheism and infidelity, 
in folio, which I after mention, when I was 
desired to borrow a manuscript of his law col- 
lections, he showed me, as I remember, about 
two and thirty folios, and told me, he had no 
other on that subject, collections out of the 
Tower Records, &c. and that the amanuensis' 
work that wrote them, cost him a thousand 
pounds. He was so set on study, that he 
resolvedly avoided all necessary diversions, 
and so little valued either grandeur, wealth, 
or any worldly vanity, that he avoided them 
to that notable degree, which incompetent 
judges took to be an excess. His habit was 
so coarse and plain, that I, who am thought 
guilty of a culpable neglect therein, have been 
bold to desire him to lay by some things 
which seemed too homely. The house which 
I surrendered to him, and wherein he lived at 
Acton, was indeed well situate, but very small, 
and so far below the ordinary dwellings of 
men of his rank, as that divers farmers there- 
abouts had better ; but it pleased him. Many 
censured him for choosing his last wife below 
his quality : but the good man more regarded 
his own daily comfort, than men's thoughts 
M 3 



126 THE LIFE OF 

and talk. As far as I coirld discern, he chose 
one very suitable to his ends ; one of his own 
judgment and temper, prudent, and loving, 
and fit to please him ; and that would not 
draw on him the trouble of much acquaint- 
ance and relations. His housekeeping was 
according to the rest, like his estate and mind, 
but not like his place and honour : for he re- 
solved never to grasp at riches, nor take great 
fees, but would refuse what many others 
thought too httle, I wondered when he told 
me how small his estate was, after such ways 
of getting as were before him : but as he had 
little, and desired little, so he was content 
with little, and suited his dwelling, table, and 
retinue thereto. He greatly shunned the 
visits of many, or great persons, that came 
not to him on necessary business, because all 
his hours were precious to him, and therefore 
he contrived the avoiding of them, and the 
free enjoyment of his beloved privacy. 

I must with a glad remembrance acknow- 
ledge, that while we were so unsuitable in 
places and worth, yet some suitableness of 
judgment and disposition made our frequent 
converse pleasing to us both. The last time 
but one, that I was at his house, he made me 
lodge there, and in the morning inviting me 
to more frequent visits said, no man shall be 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 127 

more welcome ; and he was no dissembler. 
To signify his love, he put my name as a le- 
gatee in his will, bequeathing me forty shil- 
lings. Mr. Stephens gave me two manuscripts, 
as appointed by him for me, declaring his judg- 
ment of our church contentions and their 
cure, aftermentioned. Though they are im- 
perfect as written on the same question at 
several times, I had a great mind to print them, 
to try whether the common reverence of the 
author would cool any of our contentious 
clergy : but hearing that there was a restraint 
in his will, I took out part of a copy in which 
I find these words, '* I do expressly declare, 
that 1 will have nothing of my writings printed 
after my death, but only such as I shall in my 
life-time deliver out to be printed." And not 
having received this in his life-time, nor to be 
printed in express terms, I am afraid of cross- 
ing the will of the dead, though he ordered 
them for me. 

It showed his mean estate as to riches, that 
in his will he is put to distribute the profits of 
a book or two when printed, among his friends 
and servants. Alas ! we that are great losers by 
printing, know that it must be a small gain that 
must thus accrue to them. Doubtless^ if the 
Lord Chief Justice Hale had gathered money 
as other lawyers do that had less advantage, 



128 THE LIFE OF 

as he wanted not will, so he would not have 
wanted power to have left them far greater 
legacies. But the servants of a self-denying 
mortified master, must be content to suffer by 
his virtues, which yet if they imitate him, 
will turn to their final gain. 

God made him a public good, which is more 
than to get riches. His great judgment and 
known integrity commanded respect from 
those that knew him ; so that 1 verily think, 
that no one subject since the days that history 
hath notified the affairs of England to us, 
went off the stage with greater and more uni- 
versal love and honour ; and what honour 
without love is, I understand not. I remem- 
ber, when his successor, the Lord Chief Justice 
Rainsford, falling into some melancholy, came 
and sent to me for some advice, he did it, as 
he said, because Judge Hale desiredjhim so to 
do ; and expressed so great respect to his 
judgment and writings, as I perceived much 
prevailed with him. And many have profited 
by his contemplations, who would never have 
read them, had they been written by such a one 
as I. Yet among all his books and discourses, 
I never knew of these until he was dead. 

His resolution for justice was so great, that 
1 am persuaded, that no wealth nor honour 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 129 

would have hired him knowingly to do one 
unjust act. And though he left us in sorrow, 
I cannot but acknowledge it a great mercy to 
him, to be taken away when he was. Alas ! 
what would the good man have done, if he 
had been put by plotters, and traitors, and 
swearers, and forswearers, upon all that his 
successors have been put to ? Tn likelihood, 
even all his great wisdom and sincerity, could 
never have got him through such a wilderness 
of thorns, and briars, and wild beasts, without 
tearing in pieces his entire reputation, if he 
had never so well secured his conscience. O ! 
how seasonably did he avoid the tempest and 
go to Christ. And so have so many excellent 
persons since then, and especially within the 
space of one year, as may well make England 
tremble at the prognostick, that the righteous 
are taken as from the evil to come. And alas ! 
what an evil is it like to be ? We feel our loss. 
We fear the common danger. But what be- 
liever can choose but acknowledge God's 
mercy to them, in taking them up to the world 
of light, love, peace, and order, when confu- 
sion is coming upon this world, by darkness, 
malignity, perfidiousness and cruelty. Some 
think that the last conflagration shall turn 
this earth into hell. If so, who would not first 



130 THE LIFE OF 

be taken from it ? And when it is so like to 
hell already, who would not rather be in 
heaven ? 

Though some mistook this man for a mere 
philosopher or humanist, that knew him not 
within; yet his most serious description of 
the sufferings of Christ, and his copious vo- 
lumes to prove the truth of the scripture, Chris- 
tianity, our immortality, and the Deity, do 
prove so much reality in his faith and devo- 
tion, as makes us past doubt of the reality of 
his reward and glory. When he found his 
belly swell, his breath and strength much 
abate, and his face and flesh decay, he cheer- 
fully received the sentence of death : and 
though Dr. Glisson by mere oximel squilliti- 
Gum, seemed a while to ease him, yet that 
also soon failed him ; and he told me he was 
prepared and contented comfortably to receive 
his change. And accordingly he left us, and 
went into his native country of Gloucester- 
shire to die, as the history tells you. 

Mr. Edward Stephens being most familiar 
with him, told me his purpose to write his 
life : and desired me to draw up the mere nar- 
rative of my short familiarity with him ; which 
I did as followeth : by hearing no more of 
him, cast it by ; but others desiring it, upon 
the sight of the published history of his life 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 131 

by Dr. Burnet, I have left it to the discretion 
of some of them, to do with it what they will. 
And being half dead already in those dearest 
friends who were half myself, am much the 
more willing to leave this mole-hill and prison 
of earth, to be with that wise and blessed so- 
ciety, who being united to their head in glory^ 
do not envy, hate, or persecute each other, 
nor forsake God, nor sTiall ever be forsaken by 
him. R. B. 

Note, That this narrative was written two 
years before Dr. Burnet's ; and it is not 
to be doubted but that he had better in- 
formation of his manuscripts, and some 
other circumstances, than I. But of 
those manuscripts directed to me^ about 
the souFs immortality, of which I have 
the originals under his hand, and also of 
his thoughts of the subjects mentioned 
by me, from 1671, till he went to die in 
Gloucestershire, I had the fullest notice. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES 

ON THE 

LIFE AND DEATH 

OF 

SIR MATTHEW HALE. 



TO MY WORTHY FRIEND MR. STEPHENS, THE 
PUBLISHER OF JUDGE HALE'S CONTEMPLA- 
TIONS. 

SIR, 

You desired me to give you notice of what 
I knew, in my personal converse, of the great 
lord chief justice of England, Sir Matthew 
Hale. You have partly made any thing of 
mine unmeet for the sight of any but yourself 
and his private friends, to whom it is useless, 
by your divulging those words of his extraor- 
dinary favour to me, which will make it 
thought that 1 am partial in his praises. And 
indeed that excessive esteem of his, which you 
have told men of, is a divulging of his imper- 
fection, who did overvalue so unworthy a per- 
son as I know myself to be. 

I will promise you to say nothing but the 
truth ; and judge of it and use it as you 
please. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 133 

My acquaintance with him was not long ; 
and I looked on him as an excellent person 
studied in his own way, which I hoped I 
should never have occasion to make much use 
of; but I thought not so versed in our matters 
as ourselves. I was confirmed in this conceit 
by the first report I had from him, which was 
his wish^ that Dr. Reignolds, Mr. Calamy^ and 
I^ would have taken bishopricks, when they 
were offered us by the lord chancellor, as from 
the King, in 1660, as one did; I thought he 
understood not our case, or the true state of 
English prelacy. Many years after when I 
lived at Acton, he being lord chief baron of 
the exchequer, suddenly took a house in the 
village. We sat next seats together at church 
many weeks, but neither did he ever speak to 
me, or I to him. At last, my extraordinary 
friend, to whom I was more beholding than I 
must here express, Serjeant Fountain, asked 
me why I did not visit the lord chief baron ? 
I told him, because I had no reason for it, 
being a stranger to him ; and had some against 
it, viz. that a judge, whose reputation was ne- 
cessary to the ends of his office, should not be 
brought under court suspicion, or disgrace, by 
his familiarity with a person, whom the inte- 
rest and diligence of some prelates had ren- 
dered so odious, as I knew myself to be with 



134 THE LIFE OF 

such; I durst not be so injurious to him. The 
Serjeant answered, it is not meet for him to 
come first to you ; I know why I speak it : 
let me entreat you to go first to him. In 
obedience to which request I did it ; and so we 
entered into neighbourly familiarity. I lived 
then in a small house, but it had a pleasant 
garden and backside, which the honest land- 
lord had a desire to sell. The judge had a 
mind to the house ; but he would not meddle 
with it, till he got a stranger to me to come 
and inquire of me whether I was willing to 
leave it ? I told him I was not only willing but 
desirous, not for my own ends, but for my 
landlord's sake, who must needs sell it : and 
so he bought it, and lived in that poor house, 
till his mortal sickness sent him to the place 
of his interment. 

I will truly tell you the matter and the 
manner of our converse. We were oft toge- 
ther, and almost all our discourse was philo- 
sophical, and especially about the nature of 
spirits and superior regions ; and the nature, 
operations, and immortality of man's soul. 
And our disposition and course of thoughts 
were in such things so like, that I did not much 
cross the bent of his conference. He studied 
physics, and got all new or old books of phi- 
losophy that he could meet with, as eagerly as 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 135 

if he had been a boy at the University. Mous- 
nerius, and Honoratus Faber, he deservedly 
much esteemed ; but yet took not the latter 
to be without some mistakes. Mathematics 
he studied more than I did, it being a know- 
ledge which he much more esteemed than 1 
did ; who valued all knowledge by the great- 
ness of the benefit, and necessity of the use ; 
and my unskilfulness in them, I acknowledge 
my great defect, in which he much excelled. 
But we were both much addicted to know and 
read all the pretenders to more than ordinary 
in physics ; the Platonists, the Peripatetics, 
the Epicureans, and especially their Gassen- 
dus, Teleius, Campanella, Patricius, Lullius, 
White, and every sect that made us any en- 
couraging promise. We neither of us ap- 
proved of all in Aristotle ; but he valued him 
more than I did. We both greatly disliked the 
principles of Cartesius and Gassendus, much 
more of the Bruitists, Hobbes and Spinosa ; 
especially their doctrine de motu, and their 
obscuring or denying nature itself, even the 
principia motus, the xirtutes for males, which 
are the causes of operations. 

Whenever we were together, he was the 
spring ofour discourse, as choosing the subject: 
and most of it still was of the nature of spi- 
rits, and the immortality, state, and operations 



136 THE LIFE OF 

of separated souls. We both were conscious 
of human darkness, and how much of our 
understandings, quiet in such matters, must 
be fetched from our imphcit trust in the 
goodness and promises of God, rather than 
from a clear and satisfying conception of the 
mode of separated souls' operations ; and how 
great use we have herein of our faith in Jesus 
Christ, as he is the undertaker, mediator, the 
Lord and lover of souls^ and the actual pos- 
sessor of that glory. But yet we thought, 
that it greatly concerned us, to search as far 
as God allowed us, into a matter of so great 
moment ; and that even little and obscure 
prospects into the heavenly state, are more 
excellent than much and applauded know- 
ledge of transitory things. 

He was much in urging difficulties and ob- 
jections ; but you could not tell by them what 
was his own judgment : for when he was able 
to answer them himself, he would draw out 
another's answer. 

He was but of a slow speech, and some- 
times so hesitating, that a stranger would 
have thought him a man of low parts, that 
knew not readily what to say, though ready at 
other times. But I never saw Cicero's doc- 
trine de Oratore more verified Jn any man, 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 137 

that furnishing the mind with all sorts of 
knowledge is the chief thing to make an ex- 
cellent orator ; for when there is abundance 
and clearness of knowledge in the mind, it 
will furnish even a slow tongue to speak that 
which by its congruence and verity shall pre- 
vail. Such a one never wants moving mat- 
ter, nor an answer to vain objectors. 

The manner of our converse was as suit- 
able to my inclination as the matter. For 
whereas many bred in universities, and called 
scholars, have not the wit, manners, or pa- 
tience, to hear those that they discourse with 
speak to the end, but through list and impo- 
tency cannot hold, but cut off a man's speech 
when they hear any thing that urgeth them, 
before the latter part make the former intelli- 
gible or strong, when oft the proof and use is 
reserved to the end ; liker scolds than scho- 
lars ; as if they commanded silence at the 
end of each sentence to him that speaketh, 
or else would have two talk at once : I do 
not remember that ever he and I did interrupt 
each other in any discourse. His wisdom and 
accustomed patience caused him still to stay 
for the end. And though my disposition have 
too much forwardness to speak, I had not so 
little wit or manners, as to interrupt him ; 
N 3 



138 THE LIFE OF 

whereby we far better understood each other, 
than we could have done in chopping and 
maimed discourse. 

He was much for coming to philosophical 
knowledge by the help of experiments : but 
he thought that our new philosophers, as 
some call the Cartesians, had taken up many 
fallacies as experiments, and had made as un- 
happy a use of their trials, as many empyricks 
and mountebanks do in medicine : and that 
Aristotle was a man of far greater experience, 
as well as study, than they. He was wont 
to say, that lads at the universities had found 
it a way to be thought wiser than others, to 
'oin with boasters that cried down the ancients 
before they understood them ; for he thought 
that few of these contemners of Aristotle had 
ever so far studied him, as to know his 
doctrine, but spoke against they knew not 
what ; even as some secular theologues take 
it to be the way to be thought wise men and 
orthodox, to cant against some party or sect 
which they have advantage to contemn. It 
must cost a man many years' study to know 
what Aristotle held. But to read over Magi- 
rus, and perhaps the Conimbricenses or Za- 
barell, and then prate against Aristotle, re- 
quireth but a little time and labou^. He 
could well bear it, when one that had tho- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 139 

roughly studied Aristotle, dissented from him 
in any particular upon reason ; but he loathed 
it in ignorant men, that were carried to it by 
shameful vanity of mind. 

His many hard questions, doubts and ob- 
jections to me, occasioned me to draw up a 
small tract of the nature and immortality of 
man's soul, as proved by natural light alone, 
by way of questions and answers ; in which I 
had not baulked the hardest objections and 
difficulties that I could think of, conceiv- 
ing that Atheists and Sadducees are so unhap- 
pily witty, and Satan such a tutor, that they 
are as like to think of them as I. But the 
good man, when I sent it to him, was wiser 
than I, and sent me word in his return, that 
he would not have me publish it in English, 
nor without some alterations of the method ; 
because though he thought I had sufficiently 
answered all the objections, yet ordinary 
readers would take deeper into their minds 
such hard objections as they never heard be- 
fore, than the answer, how full soever, would 
be able to overcome ; whereupon, not hav- 
ing leisure to translate and alter it, I cast 
it by. 

He seemed to reverence and believe the 
opinion of Dr. Willis, and such others, de ani- 
mis hnitorumy as being not spiritual substances. 



140 THE LIFE OF 

But when I sent him a confutation of them, 
he seemed to acquiesce, and as far as I could 
judge, did change his mind ; and had higher 
thoughts of sensitive natures, than they that 
take them to be some evanid qualities, pro- 
ceeding from contexture, attemperation, and 
motion. 

Yet he and I did think, that the notion of 
immateriality had little satisfactory to ac- 
quaint us with the nature of a spirit, not tell- 
ing us any thing what it is, but what it is 
not. And we thought, that the old Greek 
and Latin doctors cited by Faustus Rhegi- 
culis, whom Mamertus answereth, did mean 
by a body or matter of which the said spirits 
did consist, the same thing as we now mean 
by the substance of spirits, distinguishing 
them from mere accidents. And we thought 
it a matter of some moment, and no small 
difficulty, to tell what men mean here by the 
word substance, if it be but a relative notion, 
because it doth sub stare accide7itibus Sf subsis- 
tere per se, relation is not proper substance. 
It is substance that doth so subsist : it is some- 
what, and not nothing, nor an accident. 
Therefore if more than relation must be meant, 
it will prove hard to distinguish substance 
from substance by the notion of immateriality. 
Souls have no shadows ; they are not palpa- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 141 

ble and gross ; but they are substantial life, 
as virtues. And it is hard to conceive, how 
a created tis vel virtus should be the adequate 
concept us of a spirit, and not rather an inade- 
quate, supposing the conceptus of substantia 
fundamentalist as Dr. Glisson calls it de vita 
natune, seeing omnis virtus est rei alien i 
virtus. 

Yet he yielded to me, that virtus sen vis 
vitalis, is not animce accidens, but the concep- 
tus formalis spiritus, supposing substantia to 
be the conceptus fundament alis : and both to- 
gether express the essence of a spirit. 

Every created being is passive ; for recipit 
in fluxum causce primce, God transcendeth 
our defining skill : but where there is recep- 
tivity, many ancients thought there were some 
pure sort of materiality : and we say, there 
is receptive substantiality : and who can de- 
scribe the difference, laying aside the formal 
virtues that difference things, between the 
highest material substance, and the lowest 
substance, called immaterial ? 

We were neither of us satisfied with the 
notions of penetrability and indivisibility, as 
sufficient differences. But the virtutes sped- 
ficce plainly difference. 

What latter thoughts, a year before he 
died, he had of these things, I know not : but 



142 THE LIFE OF 

some say, that a treatise of this subject, the 
soul's immortality, was his last finished work, 
promised in the end of his treatise of man's 
origination ; and if we have the sight of that, 
it will fuller tell us his judgment. 

One thing I must notify to you, and to 
those that have his manuscripts, that when I 
sent him a scheme, with some elucidations, 
he wrote me on that, and my treatise of the 
soul, almost a quire of paper of animadver- 
sions ; by which you must not conclude at 
all of his own judgment; for he professed to 
me, that he wrote them to me, not as his 
judgment, but, as his way was, as the hard- 
est objections which he would have satisfac- 
tion in. And when I had written him a full 
answer to all, and have been oft since with 
him, he seemed satisfied. You will wrong 
him therefore, if you should print that writ- 
ten to me as his judgment. 

As to his judgment about religion ; our 
discourse was very sparing about controver- 
sies. He thought not fit to begin with me 
about them, nor I with him : and as it was 
in me, so it seemed to be in him, from a con- 
ceit that we were not fit to pretend to add 
much to one another. 

About matters of conformity, I could glad- 
ly have known his mind more fully : but I 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 143 

thought it unmeet to put such questions to a 
judge, who must not speak against the laws ; 
and he never offered his judgment to me. 
And I knew, that as I was to reverence him 
in his own profession, so in matters of my 
profession and concernment, he expected not 
that I should think as he, beyond the reasons 
which he gave. 

I must say that he was of opinion^ that the 
wealth and honour of the bishops was conve- 
nient, to enable them the better to reheve the 
poor, and rescue the inferior clergy from op- 
pression, and to keep up the honour of reli- 
gion in the world. But all this on supposi- 
tion, that it would be in the hands of wise 
and good men, or else it would do as much 
harm. But when I asked him, whether great 
wealth and honour would not be most ear- 
nestly desired and sought by the worst of 
men, while good men would not seek them ? 
And whether he that was the only fervent 
seeker, was not likeliest to obtain, except 
under some rare extraordinary prince ? And 
so whether it was not like to entail the office 
on the worst, and to arm Christ's enemies 
against him to the end of the world, which 
a provision that had neither alluring nor much 
discouraging temptation might prevent, he 
gave me no answer. I have heard some say, 



144 THE LIFE OF 

if the Pope were a good man, what a deal of 
good might he do ! But have Popes there- 
fore blessed the world ? 

I can say truly, that he greatly lamented 
the negligence, and ill lives, and violence of 
some of the clergy ; and would oft say, What 
have they their calling, honour and mainte- 
nance for, but to seek the instructing and 
saving of men^s souls ? 

He much lamented, that so many worthy 
ministers were silenced, the church weakened, 
papists strengthened, the cause of love and 
piety greatly wronged and hindered by the 
present differences about conformity. And 
he hath told me his judgment, that the only 
means to heal us was, a new act of uniformi- 
ty, which should neither leave all at liberty, 
nor impose any thing but necessary. 

I had once a full opportunity to try his 
judgment far in this. It pleased the Lord 
Keeper Bridgman to invite Dr. Manton and 
myself, to whom Dr. Bates at our desire was 
added, to treat with. Dr. Wilkins and Dr. 
Burton about the terms of our reconciliation 
and restoration to our ministerial liberty. 
After some days' conference, we came to 
agreement in all things, as to the necessary 
terms. And because Dr. Wilkins and I had 
special intimacy with Judge Hale, we desired 



SIR MATTHKW HALE. 145 

him to draw it up in the form of an act, 
which he willingly did, and we agreed to 
every word. But it pleased the House of 
Commons, hearing of it, to begin their next 
session with a vote, that no such bill should 
be brought in ; and so it died. 

Query. 1. Whether after this and other 
such agreement, it be ingenuity, or some- 
what else, that hath ever since said, we know 
not what they would have? And that at 
once call out to us, and yet strictly forbid us 
to tell them what it is we take for sin, and 
what we desire. 

2. Whether it be likely, that such men as 
Bishop WilkinS;, and Dr. Burton, and Judge 
Hale, would consent to such terms of our 
concord^ as should be worse than our present 
condition of division and compulsion is ? 
And whether the maintainers of our dividing 
impositions, be all wiser and better men than 
this judge and that bishop were? 

3. And whether it be any distance of opi- 
nion, or difficulty of bringing us to agree- 
ment, that keepeth England in its sad divi- 
sions ; or rather some men's opinion, that our 
unity itself is not desirable, lest it strengthen 
us ? The case is plain. 

His behaviour in the church was confor- 
mable, but prudent. He constantly heard a 



146 THE LIFE OF 

curate, too low for such an auditor. In com- 
mon-prayer he behaved himself as others, 
saving that, to avoid the differencing of the 
gospels from the epistles, and the bowing at 
the name of Jesus, from the names, Christ, 
Saviour, God, &c. He would use some equa- 
lity in his gestures, and stand up at the read- 
ing of all God's word alike. 

I had but one fear or suspicion concern- 
ing him, which since I am assured was ground- 
less : I was afraid lest he had been too little 
for the practical part of religion, as to the 
working of the soul towards God, in prayer, 
meditation, &c. because he seldom spake to 
me of such subjects, nor of practical books, 
or sermons ; but was still speaking of philo- 
sophy, or of spirits, souls, the future state, 
and the nature of God. But at last I under- 
stood that his averseness to hypocrisy made 
him purposely conceal the most of such of his 
practical thoughts and works, as the world 
now findeth by his contemplations and other 
writings. 

He told me once, how God brought him to 
a fixed honour and observation of the Lord's 
day : that when he was young, being in the 
west, the sickness or death of some relation 
at London, made some matter of estate to be- 
come his concernment; which required his 



sill MATTHEW HALE. 147 

hastening to London from the west : and he 
was commanded to travel on the Lord's day ; 
but I cannot well remember how many cross 
accidents befel him in his journey ; one horse 
fell lame, another died, and much more ; 
which struck him with such sense of divine 
rebuke, as he never forgot. 

When I went out of the house, in which he 
succeeded me, I went into a greater, over- 
against the church-door. The town having 
great need of help for their souls, I preached 
between the public sermons in my house, 
taking the people with me to the church, to 
common prayer and sermon, morning and 
evening. The judge told me that he thought 
my course did the church much service ; and 
would carry it so respectfully to me at my 
door, that all the people might perceive his 
approbation. But Dr. Reeves could not bear 
it, but complained against me ; and the 
Bishop of London caused one Mr. Rosse of 
Brainford, and Mr. Philips, two justices of 
the peace, to send their warrants to appre- 
hend me. I told the judge of the warrant, 
but asked him no counsel, nor he gave me 
none ; but with tears showed his sorrow : the 
only time that ever I saw him weep. So I 
was sent to the common gaol for six months, 
by these two justices, by the procurement of 



148 THE LIFE Ob' 

the said Dr. Reeves, his majesty's chaplain, 
dean of Windsor, dean of Wolverhampton, 
parson of Horseley, and parson of Acton. 
When I came to move for my release upon a 
habeas corpus, by the counsel of my great 
friend Serjeant Fountain, I found that the 
character which Judge Hale had given of me, 
stood me in some stead ; and every one of the 
four judges of the common pleas, did not 
only acquit me, but said more for me than my 
counsel, viz. Judge Wild^ Judge Archer, 
Judge Tyrrel, and the Lord Chief Justice 
Vaughan ; and made me sensible how great 
a part of the honour of his majesty's govern- 
ment, and the peace of the kingdom, con- 
sisted in the justice of the judges. 

And indeed Judge Hale would tell me, that 
Bishop Usher w^as much prejudiced against 
lawyers, because the worst causes find their 
advocates ; but that he and Mr. Selden had 
convinced him of the reasons of it, to his sa- 
tisfaction : and that he did by acquaintance 
with them, believe that there were as many 
honest men among lawyers, proportionably, 
as among any profession of men in England, 
not excepting bishops or divines. 

And I must needs say, that the improve- 
ment of reason, the diverting men from sen- 
suality and idleness, the maintaining of pro- 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 149 

priety and justice, and consequently the peace 
and welfare of the kingdom, is very much to 
be ascribed to the judges, and lawyers. 

But this imprisonment brought me the great 
loss of converse with Judge Hale : for the 
parliament in the next act against conven- 
ticles, put into it divers clauses, suited to my 
case ; by which I was obliged to go dwell in 
another county, and to forsake both London 
and my former habitation ; and yet the jus- 
tices of another county were partly enabled to 
pursue me. 

Before I went, the judge had put into my 
hand four volumes in folio, which he had writ- 
ten, to prove the being and providence of God, 
the immortality of the soul, and life to come, 
the truth of Christianity, and of every book of 
the scripture by itself, besides the common 
proofs of the whole. Three of the four vo- 
lumes I had read over, and was sent to the 
gaol before I read the fourth. I turned down 
a few leaves for some small animadversions, 
but had no time to give them him. I could 
not then persuade him to review them for the 
press. The only fault I found with them of any 
moment, was that great copiousness, the effect 
of his fulness and patience, which will be 
called tediousness by impatient readers. 

When we were separated, he, that would 
o 3 



■■Bi 



150 THE LIFE OF 

receive no letters from any man, about any 
matters which he was to judge, was desirous 
of letter converse about our philosophical and 
spiritual subjects. I having then begun a 
Latin methodus theologiije, sent him one of 
the schemes before mentioned, containing the 
generals of the philosophical part, with some 
notes upon it ; which he so over-valued, that 
he urged me to proceed in the same way. I 
objected against putting so much philosophy, 
though mostly but de homifie, in a method of 
theology : but he rejected my objections, and 
resolved me to go on. 

At last it pleased God to visit him with his 
mortal sickness. Having had the stone before, 
which he found thick pond-water better ease 
him of than the gravel spring-water^ in a cold 
journey an extraordinary flux of urine took 
him first, and then such a pain in his side, as 
forced him to let much blood, more than once, 
to save him from sudden suffocation or oppres- 
sion. Ever after which he had death in his 
lapsed countenance, flesh, and strength, with 
shortness of breath. Dr. Willis, in his life- 
time, wrote his case without his name, in an 
observation in his pharmaceut, <&c. which was 
shortly printed after his own death, and be- 
fore his patient's : but, I dare say it, so crudely 
as is no honour to that book. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 151 

When he had striven awhile under his 
disease, he gave up his place, not so much 
from the apprehension of the nearness of his 
death, for he could have died comfortably in 
his public work, but from the sense of his 
disability to discharge his part : but he 
ceased not his studies, and that upon points 
which I could have wished him to let go, 
being confident that he was not far from his 
end. 

I sent him a book which I newly publish- 
ed, for reconciling the controversies about 
predestination, redemption, grace, free-will, 
but desired him not to bestow too much of 
his precious time upon it : but, before he left 
his place^ I found him at it so oft, that I 
took the boldness to tell him, that I thought 
more practical writings were more suitable to 
his case, who was going from this contenti- 
ous world. He gave me but little answer ; 
but I after found that he plied practicals and 
contemplatives in their season ; which he ne- 
ver thought meet to give me any account of. 
Only in general he oft told me, that the rea- 
son and season of his writings, against Athe- 
ism, &c. aforesaid, were, both in his circuit 
at home, he used to set apart some time for 
meditation, especially after the evening pub- 
lic worship every Lord's Day; and that he 



152 THE LIFE OF 

could not so profitably keep his thoughts in 
connection and method, otherwise, as by 
writing them down ; and withal, that if there 
were any thing in them useful, it was the 
way to keep it for after-use : and therefore 
for the better management, for the accounta- 
bleness and the after-use, he had long ac- 
customed to pen his meditations ; which gave 
us all of that nature that he hath left us. 

Notwithstanding his own great furniture of 
Tcnowledge, and he was accounted by some 
somewhat tenacious of his conceptions, for 
men that know much, cannot easily yield to 
the expectations of less knowing men, yet I 
must say, that I remember not that ever I 
conversed with a man that was readier to re- 
ceive and learn. He would hear as patiently, 
and recollect all so distinctly, and then try it 
so judiciously, not disdaining to learn of an 
inferior in some things, who in more had 
need to learn of him, that he would present- 
ly take what some stand wrangling against 
many years. I never more perceived in any 
man, how much great knowledge and wisdom 
facilitate additions, and the reception of any 
thing not before known. Such a one pre- 
sently perceiveth that evidence which another 
is incapable of. 

For instance, the last time but one that 



SlJl MATTHEW HALE. 153 

I saw him, in his weakness at Acton, he 
engaged me to explicate the doctrine of di- 
vine government and decree, as consistent 
with the sin of man. And when I had dis- 
tinctly told him, 1. What God did, as the 
author of nature, physically ; 2. What he 
did as legislator, morally ; and 2, What he 
did, as benefactor, and by special grace ; 4. 
And where permission came in, and where 
actual operation ; 5. And so, how certainly 
God might cause the effects, and not cause 
the volitions, as determinate to evil, — though 
the volition and effect being called by one 
name, as theft, murder, adultery, lying, &c. 
oft deceive men, — he took up all that I had 
said in order, and distinctly twice over re- 
peated each part in its proper place, and with 
its reason : and when he had done, said, that 
I had given him satisfaction. 

Before I knew what he did himself in con- 
templations, I took it not well that he more 
than once told me, '' Mr. Baxter, I am more 
beholden to you than you are aware of; and 
I thank you for all, but especially for your 
scheme, and your catholic theology." For I 
was sorry, that a man that I thought so 
near death, should spend much of his time 
on such controversies, though tending to end 
them. But he continued after, near a year, 



154 THE LIFE OF 

and had leisure for contemplations which I 
knew not of. 

When I parted with him, 1 doubted which 
of us would be first at heaven : but he is gone 
before, and I am at the door, and somewhat 
the willinger to go, when I think such souls 
as his are there. 

When he was gone to Gloucestershire, and 
his contemplations were published by you, I 
sent him the confession of my censures of 
him, how I had feared that he had allowed 
too great a share of his time and thoughts to 
speculation, and too little to practicals, but 
rejoiced to see the conviction of my error : 
and he returned me a very kind letter, which 
was the last. 

Some censured him for living under such a 
curate at Acton, thinking it was in his power 
to have got Dr. Reeves, the parson, to pro- 
vide a better. Of which I can say, that I 
once took the liberty to tell him, that I fear- 
ed too much tepidity in him, by reason of 
that thing; not that he needed himself a 
better teacher, who knew more, and could 
overlook scandals; but for the sake of the 
poor ignorant people, who greatly needed 
better help. He answered me, that if money 
would do it, he would willingly have done it; 
but the doctor was a man not to be dealt with ; 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 155 

which was the hardest word that I remember 
I ever heard him use of any : for I never 
knew any man more free from speaking evil 
of others behind their backs. Whenever the 
discourse came up to the faultiness of any 
individuals, he would be silent : but the sorts 
of faulty persons he would blame with cau- 
telous freedom, especially idle, proud, scan- 
dalous, contentious, and factious clergymen. 
We agreed in nothing more than that which 
he oft repeateth in the papers which you 
gave me, and which he oft expressed, viz. 
that true religion consisteth in great, plain, 
necessary things, the life of faith and hope, 
the love of God and man, an humble self-de- 
nying mind, with mortification- of worldly 
affection, carnal lust, &c. And that the ca-- 
lamity of the church, and withering of reli- 
gion, hath eome from proud and busy men's 
additions, that cannot give peace to them- 
selves and others^ by living in love and quiet- 
ness on this Christian simplicity of faith and 
practice, but vex and turmoil the church 
with these needless and hurtful superfluities ; 
some by their decisions of words, or unne- 
cessary controversies ; and some by their 
restless reaching after their own worldly inte- 
rest, and corrupting the church, on pretence 
of raising and defending it; some by their 



156 THE LIFE OF 

needless ceremonies^ and some by their su- 
perstitious and causeless scruples. But he 
was especially angry at them that would so 
manage their differences about such things, 
as to show, that they had a greater zeal for 
their own additions, than for the common 
saving truths and duties which we were all 
agreed in ; and that did so manage their se- 
veral little and selfish causes, as wounded or 
injured the common cause of the Christian 
and reformed churches. He had a great dis- 
taste of the books called a Friendly Debate, 
&c. and Ecclesiastical Polity^ as from an evil 
spirit, injuring scripture phrase, and tempt- 
ing the Atheists to contemn all religion, so 
they might but vent their spleen, and be 
thought to have the better of their adversa- 
ries ; and would say, how easy is it to requite 
such men, and all parties to expose each 
other to contempt ! Indeed, how many pa- 
rishes in England afford too plenteous matter 
of reply to one that took that for his part ; 
and of tears to serious observers ! 

His main desire was, that as men should 
not be peevishly quarrelsome against any 
lawful circumstances, forms, or orders in reli- 
gion, much less think themselves godly men, 
because they can fly from other men's cir- 
cumstances, or settled lawful orders as sin ; 



SIR xMATTHEW HALE. 157 

SO especialiyj that no human additions of 
opinion, order, modes, ceremonies, profes- 
sions, or promises, should ever be managed 
to the hindering of Christian love and peace, 
nor of the preaching of the Gospel, nor the 
wrong of our common cause, or the strength- 
ening of Atheism, infidelity, profaneness, or 
Popery ; but that Christian verity and piety, 
the love of God and man, and a good life, 
and our common peace in these, might be 
first resolved on and secured, and all our ad- 
ditions might be used, but in due subordina- 
tion to these, and not to any injury of any of 
them ; nor sects, parties, or narrow interests 
be set up against the common duty, and the 
public interest and peace. 

I know you are acquainted how greatly he 
valued Mr. Selden, being one of his execu- 
tors ; his books and picture being still near 
him. I think it meet therefore to remem- 
ber, that because many Hobbists do report 
that Mr. Selden was at the heart an infidel, 
and inclined to the opinions of Hobbes, I de- 
sired him to tell me the truth herein : and 
he oft professed to me, that Mr. Selden was 
a resolved serious Christian ; and that he was 
a great adversary to Hobbes's errors ; and that 
he had seen him openly oppose him so ear- 
nestly as either to depart from him, or drive 
p 



158 THE LIFE OF 

him out of the room. And as Mr. Selden 
was one of those called Erastians, as his 
book de Synedriis and others show, yet 
owned the office properly ministerial : so 
most lawyers that ever I was acquainted with, 
taking the word jurisdiction to signify some- 
thing more than the mere doctoral, priestly 
power, and power over their own sacramental 
communion in the church which they guide, 
do use to say, that it is primarily in the ma- 
gistrate, as no doubt all power of corporal 
coercion by mulcts and penalties is. And 
as to the accidentals to the proper power of 
priesthood, or the keys, they truly say with 
Dr. Stillingfleet, that God hath settled no 
one form. 

Indeed, the lord chief justice thought, that 
the power of the word and sacraments in the 
ministerial office, was of God's institution ; 
and that they were the proper judges ap- 
pointed by Christ, to whom they themselves 
should apply sacraments, and to whom they 
should deny them. But that the power of 
chancellor's courts, and many modal addi- 
tions, which are not of the essence of the 
priestly office, floweth from the King, and 
may be fitted to the state of the kingdom. 
Which is true, if it be limited by God's laws, 
and exercised on things only allowed them to 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 159 

deal in, and contradict not the orders and 
powers settled on by Christ and his apostles. 

On this account he thought well of the 
form of government in the Church of Eng- 
land ; lamenting the miscarriages of many 
persons, and the want of parochial reforma- 
tion : but he was greatly for uniting in love 
and peace, upon so much as is necessary to 
salvation, with all good, sober, peaceable 
men. 

And he was much against the corrupting 
of the Christian religion, whose simplicity 
and purity he justly took to be much of its 
excellency, by men's busy additions, by wit, 
policy, ambition, or any thing else which so- 
phisticateth it, and maketh it another thing, 
and causeth the lamentable contentions of 
the world. 

What he was as a lawyer, a judge, a Chris- 
tian, is so well known, that I think for me to 
pretend that my testimony is of any use, were 
vain. I will only tell you what I have writ- 
ten by his picture, in the front of the great 
Bible which I bought with his legacy , in me- 
mory of his love and name, viz. 

'' Sir Matthew Hale, that unwearied student, 
that prudent man, that solid philosopher, that 
famous lawyer, that pillar and basis of justice, 
who would not have done an unjust act for any 



160 THE LIFE OF 

worldly price or motive, the ornament of his 
majesty's government, and honour of Eng- 
land ; the highest faculty of the soul of 
Westminster-hall, and pattern to all the re- 
verend and honourable judges; that godly, 
serious, practical Christian, the lover of good- 
ness and all good men ; a lamenter of the 
clergy's selfishness, and unfaithfulness, and 
discord, and of the sad divisions following 
hereupon ; an earnest desirer of their reforma- 
tion, concord, and the church's peace, and of 
a reformed act of uniformity, as the best and 
necessary means thereto ; that great con- 
temner of the riches, pomp and vanity of the 
world ; that pattern of honest plainness and 
humility, who while he fled from the honours 
that pursued him, was yet lord chief justice 
of the king's bench, after his being long lord 
chief baron of the exchequer; living and dy- 
ing, entering on, using, and voluntarily sur- 
rendering his place of judicature, with the 
most universal love, and honour, and praise, 
that ever did English subject in this age, 
or any that just history doth acquaint us 
with, &c. This man, so wise, so good, so 
great, bequeathing me in his testament the 
legacy of forty shillings, merely as a testimo- 
ny of his respect and love, I thought this 
book, the testament of Christ, the meetest 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 161 

purchase by that price, to remain in memo- 
rial of the faithful love, which he bare and 
long expressed to his inferior and unworthy, 
but honouring friend, who thought to have 
been with Christ before him, and waiteth for 
the day of his perfect conjunction with the 
spirits of the just made perfect." 

Richard Baxter. 



p '6 



162 THE LIFE OF 

The following complete list of the published 
works of Sir Matthew Hale, extracted from 
the '' Biographical Dictionary'* of Chalmers, 
is substituted for that given by Dr. Burnet. 

Works published by himself, 

1. An Essay touching the Gravitation or 
Non-gravitation of Fluid Bodies, and the rea- 
sons thereof. 2. Difficiles Nugae ; or Obser- 
vations touching the Torricellian Experiment, 
and the various solutions of the same, espe- 
cially touching the weight and elasticity of 
the Air, 3. Observations touching the prin- 
ciples of Natural Motion, and especially 
touching Rarefaction and Condensation ; to- 
gether with a Reply to certain Remarks touch- 
ing the Gravitation of Fluids. 4. Contem- 
plations. Moral and Divine, in Three Parts. 
5. The Life and Death of Pomponius Atticus, 
written by his contemporary and acquaintance 
Cornelius Nepos ; translated out of his Frag- 
ments ; together with Observations, political 
and moral, thereupon. 6. The primitive Ori- 
gination of Mankind considered and examined 
according to the Light of Nature. 

Works published after his decease. 
1. Judgment of the Nature of true Religion, 
the causes of its Corruption, and the Church's 
Calamity by men's addition and violences. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 163 

with the desired Cure. 2. Several Tracts ; as, 
a ** Discourse of Religion" under three heads, 
&c. S. A Letter to his Children, advising 
them how to behave in their speech, &c. 4. 
A Letter to one of his Sons, after his recovery 
from the Small Pox. 5. Discourse of the 
Knowledge of God and of ourselves ; first by 
the Light of Nature, secondly by the Sacred 
Scriptures. 

All the preceding, under the title of his 
^^ Moral and Religious Works," were re-pub- 
lished by the Rev. Thomas Thirlwall, 1805, 2 
vols, with his Life, &c. 

6. Counsels of a Father, 12mo. 1821. 

7. Letters to his Grandchildren, 12mo.l823. 
Of his Law tracts, one only was printed in 

his life -time, viz. : '^ London Liberty, or an 
argument of Law and Reason,'* 1650, which 
was reprinted in 1682, under the title of 
** London's Liberties, or the opinions of those 
great lawyers. Lord Chief Justice Hale, Mr. 
Justice Wild, and Serjeant Maynard. about 
the election of Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, and 
Common Council of London, and concerning 
their charter."— In 1668 he wrote a preface to 
RoUe's Abridgment, which he published with 
the whole of that work. 

After his death appeared, 1. '^ The Pleas 
of the Crown, or a Methodical Summary," 



1G4 THE LIFE OF 

1678, 8vo. continued by Jacob, and reprinted 
in 1716. To this edition is often annexed, 
^* The Treatise of Sheriffs' Accounts/' and 
" The Trial of the Witches." It must not be 
concealed that this otherwise learned and sa- 
gacious man wa& so far prejudiced by early 
opinions, as to believe in witchcraft, and to 
preside on the trials of some persons accused 
of it. The "• Pleas'' has passed through seven 
editions, the last of which was in 1773. It 
was not, however, considered b^ the author as 
a complete work, but intended as a plan for 
his '' Historia Placitorum Coronoe," of which 
hereafter. 2. '' Treatise showing how useful, 
&c, the inroUing and registering of all con- 
veyances of land," 1694, 4to. reprinted with 
additions in 1756. 3. ^* Tractatus de Succes- 
sionibus apud Anglos, or a Treatise of Here- 
ditary Descents," 1700, and 1735, 8vo. This 
forms a chapter in his " History of the Com- 
mon Law." 4. ** A Treatise on the original 
Institution, &c. of Parliaments," 1707, re- 
published by Francis Hargrave, &c. in 1796, 
4to. under the title of ^' Hale's Jurisdiction 
of the House of Lords," with an introductory 
preface, including a narrative of the same ju- 
risdiction, from the accession of James I. 5. 
'* Analysis of the Law," without date, but 
seems to have been only a design for, 6. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 165 

*' History of the Common Law of England, 
in twelve chapters/' 1713, 8vo. a fourth and 
fifth edition of which were published in 1779 
and 1794^ 2 vols. 8vo. by Mr. Serjeant Run- 
nington. 7. ^* Historia Placitorum Coronae, 
or History of the Pleas of the Crown,'' 1739, 
2 vols, folio, edited by Sollom Emlyn, esq. 
and again in 1772, by George Wilson, esq. 
2 vols. 8vo. and lastly in the same size, in 
1800, by Thomas Dogherty, esq. There are a 
few other tracts and opinions published by 
Mr. Hargrave and other law-writers in their 
collections. 



Manuscripts mentioned by Dr, Burnet^ as not 
yet published, [1682.] 

1. Concerning the secondary Origination of 

Mankind, folio. 

2. Concerning Religion, 5 vols, in folio, viz. : 

1. De Deo, Vox Metaphysica, parts 1 
and 2. 2. Pars 3. Vox Naturae, Provi- 
dentise, Ethicse, Conscientise. 3. Liber 
sextus, Septimus, octavus. 4. Pars 9. 
Concerning the Holy Scriptures, their 
Evidence and Authority. 5. Concern- 
ing the Truth of the Holy Scripture, 
and the Evidences thereof. 

3. Of Policy in matters of Religion, folio. 

4. De Anima, to Mr. B. folio. 



166 THE LIFE OF 

5. De Anima, Transactions between him and 

Mr. B. folio. 

6. Tentamina de ortu, natura, et immortali- 

tate Animoe. folio. 

7. Magnetismus Magneticus. folio. 

8. Magnetismus Physicus. folio. 

9. Magnetismus Divinus. 

10. De Generatione Animalium et Vegetabi- 

lium. folio, Latin. 

1 1 . Of the Law of Nature, folio. 

12. A Letter of Advice to his Grandchildren. 

quarto. 

13. Placita Coronse, 7 vols, folio. 

14. Preparatory Notes concerning the Right 

of the Crown, folio. 

15. Incepta de Juribus Coronse. folio. 

16. De Prerogativa Regis, folio. 

17. Preparatory Notes touching Parliamentary 

proceedings, 2 vols, quarto. 

18. Of the Jurisdiction of the House of 

Lords, quarto. 

19. Of the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty. 

20. Touching Ports and Customs, folia 

21. Of the Right of the Sea and the Arms 

thereof, and Customs, folio. 

22. Concerning the advancement of Trade. 

quarto. 

23. Of Sheriffs Accounts, folio. 
:84. Copies of Evidences, folio. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 16? 

25. Mr. Selden's Discourses. 8vo. 

26. Excerpta ex Scbedis Seldenianis. 

27. Journal of the 18th and 21st Jacobi 

Regis, quarto. 
2S. Great Common-place Book of Reports or 
Cases in the Law, in Law French, folio. 

In Bundles. 

On Quodtibi fieri, &c. Matthew vii. 12. 
Touching Punishments in relation to the So- 

cinian Controversy. 
Policies of the Church of Rome. 
Concerning the Laws of England. 
Of the amendment of the Laws of England. 
Touching Provision for the Poor. 
Upon Mr. Hobbes's Manuscript. 
Concerning the Time of the Abolition of the 

Jewish Laws, 

In Quarto. 
Quod sit Deus. 
Of the State and Condition of Soul and Body 

after Death. 
Notes concerning matters of Law. 



To these will be added the catalogue of Ma- 
nuscripts which he left to the honourable 
Society of Lincoln's-inn, with that part of 
his Will that concerns them. 



168 THE LIFE or 

Item, As a testimony of my honour and 
respect to the Society of Lincoln's-inn, where 
I had the greatest part of my education, I 
give and bequeath to that honourable society 
the several manuscript books contained in a 
schedule annexed to my will : they are a trea- 
sure worth having and keeping, which I have 
been near forty years in gathering, with very 
great industry and expense. My desire is 
that they be kept safe, and all together, in 
remembrance of me : they were fit to be 
bound in leather and chained, and kept in 
archives : I desire they may not be lent out, 
or disposed of; only if I happen hereafter to 
have any of my posterity of that society, that 
desires to transcribe any book, and give very 
good caution to restore it again in a prefixed 
time, such as the benchers of that society in 
council shall approve of, then, and not other- 
wise, only one book at one time may be lent 
out to them by the society ; so that there be 
no more but one book of those books abroad 
out of the library at one time. They are a 
treasure that are not fit for every man's view ; 
nor is every man capable of making use of 
them : only I would have nothing of these 
books printed, but entirely preserved together 
for the use of the industrious learned mem- 
bers of that society. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 169 

A Catalogue of the Books given by him to 
Lincoln's-inn, according to the Schedule 
annexed to his Will. 

Placita de tempore Regis Johannis, 1 vol. stitched. 
■ coram Rege Edw. I. 2 vols. 

coram Rege Edw. II. 1 vol. 

coram Rege Edw. III. 3 vols. 

• coram Hege Ric. II. 1 vol. 

coram Rege Hen. IV. Hen. V. 1 vol. 

■ de Banco, Edw. I. ab anno 1, ad annum 21, 

1 vol. 

Transcripts of many Pleas, coram Rege et de Banco, 
Edw. I. 1 vol. 

The Pleas in the Exchequer, styled Communia, from 
1 Edw. III. to 46 Edw. III. 5 vols. 

Close Rolls of King John, verbatim, of the most ma- 
terial things, 1 vol. 

The principal matters in the Close and Patent Rolls 
of Henry III. transcribed verbatim from 9 Henry 
III. to 56 Henry III. 5 vols, vellum, marked K.L. 

The principal matters in the Close and Patent Rolls 
Edw. I. with several Copies and Abstracts of Re- 
cords, 1 vol. marked F. 

A long Book of Abstracts of Records by me. 

Close and Patent Rolls from 1 to 10 Edward III. and 
other Records of the time of Henry III, 1 vol. 
marked W. 

Close Rolls of 15 Edward III. with other Records, 
1 vol. marked N. 

Close RoUs from 17 to 38 Edward III. 2 vols. 

Close and Patent RoUs from 40 Edward 111. to 50 
Edward III. 1 vol. marked B. 

Close Rolls of Edward II. with other Records, 1 vol. R. 
Q 



170 THE LIFE OF 

Close and Patent Rolls, and Charter Rolls in the 
time of King John for the Clergy, 1 vol. 

A great volume of Records of several natures, G. ' 

The Leagues of the Kings of England, tempore Ed- 
ward I. Edward II. Edward III. 1 vol. 

A Book of ancient Leagues and Military Provisions, 
1 vol. 

The Reports of Iters of Derhy, Nottingham, and 
Bedford, transcribed, 1 vol. 

Itinera Forest, de Pickering et Lancaster, transcript. 
ex originali, 1 vol. 

An ancient Reading, very large, upon Charta de Fo- 
resta, and of the Forest Laws. 

The Transcript of the Iter Forestae de Dean, 1 vol. 

Quo Warranto and Liberties of the County of Glou- 
cester, with the Pleas of the Chase of Kingswood, 
1 vol. 

Transcript of the Black Book of the Admiralty, Laws 
of the Army, Impositions, and several Honours, 
1 vol. 

Records of Patents, Inquisitions, &c. of the County 
of Leicester, 1 vol. 

Muster and Military Provisions of all sorts, extracted 
from the Records, I vol. 

Gervasius Tilburiensis, or the Black Book of the Ex- 
chequer, 1 vol. 

The King's Title to the Pre-emption of Tin, a thin 
volume. 

Calendar of the Records in the Tower, a small vo- 
lume. 

A Miscellany of divers Records, Orders, and other 
things of various natures, marked E. 1 vol. 

Another of the like nature, in leather cover, I vol. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 171 

A Book of divers Records and things relating to the 
Chancery, 1 vol. 

Titles of Honour and Pedigrees, especially touching 
Clifford, 1 vol. 

History of the Marches of Wales, collected by me, 
1 vol. 

Certain Collections touching Titles of Honour, 1 vol. 

Copies of several Records touching Premunire, 1 vol. 

Extract of Commissions tempore Henr. VII. Henr. 
VIII. RR. and the Proceedings in the Court Mili- 
tary between Ray and Ramsey, 1 vol. 

Petitions in Parliament tempore Edward. I. Edward, 
II. Edward. III. Henr. IV. 3 vols. 

Summons of Parliament from 49 Henry III. to 22 
Edward IV. in 3 vols. 

The Parliament Rolls from the beginning of Edward 
I. to the end of Richard III. in 19 vols. viz. 1 of 
Edward I. 1 of Edward II. with the Ordinations ; 
2 of Edward III. 3 of Richard II. 2 of Henry IV. 
2 of Henry V. 4 of Henry VI. 3 of Edward IV. 1 
of Richard III. all transcribed at large. 

Mr. Elsing's Book touching Proceedings in Parlia- 
ment, I vol. 

Noye's Collection touching the King's Supplies, 1 vol. 
stitched. 

A Book of various Collections out of Records and 
Register of Canterbury, and Claims at the Corona- 
tion of Richard II. 1 vol. 

Transcript of Bishop Usher's Notes, principally con- 
cerning Chronology, 3 large vols. 

A Transcript out of Doomsday-Book of Gloucester- 
shire and Herefordshire, and of some Pipe-Rolls 
and old Accompts of the Customs, 1 vol. 



172 THE LIFE OF 

Extracts and Collections out of Records touching 

Titles of Honour, 1 vol. 
Extracts of Pleas, Patents, and Close Rolls, tempore 

Henr. III. Edward. I. Edward. II. Edward. III. 

and some old Antiquities of England, 1 vol. 
Collections and Memorials of many Records and Anti- 
quities, 1 vol. Seldeni. 
Calendar of Charters and Records in the Tower, 

touching Gloucestershire. 
Collection of Notes and Records of various natures, 

marked M. 1 vol. Seldeni. 
Transcript of the Iters of London, Kent, Cornwall, 

I vol. 
Extracts out of the Leiger-Books of Battell, Evesham, 

Winton, &c. 1 vol. Seldeni. 
Copies of the principal Records in the Red-Book in 

the Exchequer, 1 vol. 
Extracts of Records and Treatises relating to Sea- 

aiFairs, 1 vol. 
Records touching Customs, Ports, Partition of the 

lands of Gil. de Clare, &c. 
Extract of Pleas in the time of Richard I. King John, 

Edward 1. &c. 1 vol. 
Cartse Antiquae in the Tower, transcribed, in 2 vols. 
Chronological Remembrances, extracted out of the 

Notes of Bishop Usher, 1 vol. stitched. 
Inquisitiones de Legibus Walliae, 1 vol. 
Collections or Records touching Knighthood. 
Titles of Honour. Seldeni. I vol. 
Mathematics and Fortifications, 1 vol. 
Processus Curiae Militaris, I vol. 
A hook of Honour, stitched, 1 vol. 
Extracts out of the Registry of Canterbury. 



SIR MATTHEW HALE. 173 

Copies of several Records touching proceedings in the 

Military Court, 1 vol. 
Abstracts of Summons and Rolls of Parliament, out of 

the book Dunelm. and some Records alphabetically 

digested, 1 vol. 
Abstracts of divers Records in the Office of First- 

Fiiiits, 1 vol. stitched. 
Mathematical and Astrological Calculations, 1 vol. 
A book of Divinity. 
Two large Repositories of Records, marked A and B. 

All those above mentioned are in Folio. 

The Proceedings of the Forests of Windsor, Dean, and 
Essex, in 4to. 1 vol. 

Those that follow are most of them in Vellum or 
Parchment. 

Two books of old Statutes, one ending Henry VII. 

the other 2 Henry V. with the Sums, 2 vols. 
Five last years of Edward II. 1 vol. 
Reports tempore Edward. II. 1 vol. 
The Year-Book of Richard II. and some others, 1 vol. 
An Old Chronicle from the Creation to Edward III. 

1 vol. 
A Mathematical Book, especially of Optics, I vol. 
A Dutch Book of Geometry and Fortification. 
3Iurti Benevenlani Geometrica, 1 vol. 
Reports tempore Edward. I. under Titles, 1 vol. 
An old Register, and some Pleas, 1 vol. 
Bernardi Bratrack PeregTinatio, I vol. 
Iter Cantii & London, and some Reports, tempore 

Edward. II. 1 vol. 
Reports tempore Edward. I. et Edward. II, 1 vol. 
Eeiger Book Abbatii^? de Beilo. 
Q 3 



174 LIFE OF Sill MATTHEW HALE. 

Isidori Opera. 

Liber Alter cationis, et Christiaiiae Philosophise, contra 
Paganos. 

Historia Petri Manducatorii. 

Hornii Astronomica. 

Historia Ecclesiae Dunelmensis. 

Holandi Chymica. 

De Alchymiae Scriptoribus. 

The Black- Book of the New Law, collected by me, 
and digested into alphabetical Titles, written with 
my own hand, which is the original copy. 



LIFE AND DEATH 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 



k^ 



THE 
OF 










31 XIS'C©I:K'S ISiK'lTEEIJOS. 






LIFE 

OF THE 

EARL OF ROCHESTER, 
By dr. JOHNSON. 



John Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Roches- 
ter, the son of Henry Earl of Rochester, bet- 
ter known by the title of Lord Wilmot, was 
born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley in Oxford- 
shire. After a grammatical education at the 
school of Barford, he entered a nobleman 
into Wadham-coUege in 1659, only twelve 
years old ; and in 1661, at fourteen, was, with 
some other persons of high rank, made mas- 
ter of arts by Lord Clarendon in person. 

He travelled afterwards into France and 
Italy ; and, at his return, devoted himself to 
the court. In 1665 he went to sea with 
Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Ber-<. 
gen by uncommon intrepidity ; and the next 
summer served again on board the ship com- 
manded by Sir Edward Spragge, who in the 
heat of the engagement, having a message of 
. reproof to send to one of his captains, could 



178 THE LIFE OF 

find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, 
who, in an open boat, went and returned 
amidst the storm of shot. 

But his reputation fur bravery was not last- 
ing ; he was reproached with slinking away 
in street- quarrels, and leaving his companions 
to shift as they could without him. 

He had very early an inclination to intem- 
perance^ which he totally subdued in his 
travels ; but, when he became a courtier, he 
-unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and 
vicious company, by which his principles 
were corrupted and his manners depraved. 
He lost all sense of religious restraint ; and 
finding it not convenient to admit the autho- 
rity of laws which he was resolved not to 
obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infide- 
lity. 

As he excelled in that noisy and licentious 
merriment which wine excites, his companions 
eagerly encouraged him in his excess, and he 
willingly indulged it, till, as he confessed 
to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together 
continually drunk, or so much inflamed by 
frequent ebriety as in no interval to be 
master of himself. 

In this state he played many frolics, which 
it is not for his honour that we should remem- 
ber, and which are not now distinctly known. 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 179 

He often pursued low amours in mean dis- 
guises, and always acted with great exact- 
ness and dexterity the characters which he 
assumed. 

He once erected a stage on Tower-hill, and 
harangued the populace as a mountebank ; 
and having made physic part of his study, is 
said to have practised it successfully. 

He was so much in favour with King 
Charles, that he was made one of the gentle- 
men of the bedchamber and comptroller of 
Woodstock Park. 

Having an active and inquisitive mind, he 
never, except in his paroxysms of intempe- 
rance, was wholly negligent of study ; he 
read what is considered as polite learning so 
much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the 
greatest scholar of all the nobility. Some- 
times he retired into the country, and amused 
himself with writing libels, in which he did 
not pretend to confine himself to truth. 

His favourite author in French was Boi- 
leau, and in English, Cowley. 

Thus, in a course of drunken gaiety, and 
gross sensuality, with intervals of study per- 
haps yet more criminal, with an avowed con- 
tempt of all decency and order, a total disre- 
gard of every moral, and a resolute denial of 
every religious obligation, he lived worthless 



180 THE LIFE OF 

and useless, and blazed out his youth and his 
health in lavish voluptuousness ; till, at the 
age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the 
fund of life, and reduced himself to a state 
of weakness and decay. 

At this time he was led to an acquaintance 
with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open with 
great freedom the tenour of his opinions, and 
the course of his life, and from whom he re- 
ceived such conviction of the reasonableness 
of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, 
as produced a total change both of his man- 
ners and opinions. The account of those 
salutary conferences is given by Burnet, in a 
book entitled '* Some Passages of the Life 
and Death of John Earl of Rochester ;" which 
the critic ought to read for its elegance, the 
philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for 
its piety. It were an injury to the reader to 
offer him an abridgement. 

He died July 26, 1680, before he had com- 
pleted his thirty-fourth year ; and was so 
worn away by a long illness, that life went 
out without a struggle. 

Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour 
of his colloquial wit, and remarkable for 
many wild pranks and sallies of extravagance. 
The glare of his general character diffused 
itself upon his writings ; the compositions of 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 181 

a man whose name was heard so often were 
certain of attention, and from many readers 
certain of applause. This blaze of reputation 
is not yet quite extinguished ; and his poetry 
still retains some splendour beyond that 
which genius has bestowed. 

Wood and Burnet gave us reason to believe 
that much was imputed to him which he did 
not write. I know not by whom the original 
collection was made, or by what authority its 
genuineness was ascertained. The first edi- 
tion was published in the year of his death, 
with an air of concealment, professing in the 
title-page to be printed at Antwerp. 

Of some of the pieces, however, there is no 
doubt. The Imitation of Horace's Satire, the 
Verses to Lord Mulgrave, the Satire against 
Man, the Verses upon Nothings and perhaps 
some others, are, 1 believe, genuine, and per- 
haps most of those which the late collection 
exhibits. 

As he cannot be supposed to have found 
leisure for any course of continued study, his 
pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of 
resolution would produce. 

His songs have no particular character : 
they tell, like other songs, in smooth and 
easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismis- 
sion and desertion, absence and inconstancy, 

R 



182 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 

with the common places of artificial court- 
ship. They are commonly smooth and easy, 
but have little nature and little sentiment. 

His imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not 
inelegant or unhappy. In the reign of 
Charles the Second began that adaptation, 
which has since been very frequent, of an- 
cient poetry to present times ; and perhaps 
few will be found where the parallelism is 
better preserved than in this. The versifica- 
tion is indeed sometimes careless, but it is 
sometimes vigorous and weighty. 

The strongest effort of his muse is his 
poem upon Nothing. 

In examining this performance, Nothing 
must be considered as having not only a ne- 
gative, but a kind of positive signification ; 
as, I need not fear thieves, I have nothing; 
and nothing is a very powerful protector. In 
the first part of the sentence it is taken nega- 
tively ; in the second it is taken positively, as 
an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a 
question, whether he should use ^ rienfaire 
or a ne rienfaire; and the first was preferred, 
because it gave rien a sense in some sort po- 
sitive. Nothing cdiii be a subject only in its 
positive sense, and such a sense is given it in 
the first line : 
'' Nothing, thou elder brother ev'n to shade.'* 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 183 

The positive sense is generally preserved 
with great skill through the whole poem ; 
though sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the 
negative nothing is injudiciously mingled. 

Another of his most vigorous pieces is his 
Lampoon on Sir Car Scroop, who, in a poem, 
called The Praise of Satire, had some lines 
like these : 

He who can push into a midnight fray 
His brave companion,* and then run away, 
Leaving him to be murdered in the street. 
Then put it off with some buffoon conceit ; 
Him, thus dishonoured, for a wit you own. 
And court him as top fiddler of the town. 

This was meant of Rochester, and drew 
from him those furious verses to which Scroop 
made in reply an epigram, ending with these 
lines : 

Thou canst hurt no man's fame with thy ill 

word ; 
Thy pen is full as harmless as thy sword. 

Of the satire against Man, Rochester can 
only claim what remains when all Boileau's 
part is taken away. 

In all his works there is sprightliness and 



* Colonel Downs. 



184 THE LIFE OF, &C. 

vigour, and every where may be found tokens 
of a mind which study might have carried to 
excellence : — what more can be expected from 
a life spent in ostentatious contempt of regu- 
larity, and ended before the abilities of many 
other men began to be displayed ? 



THE PREFACE. 



The celebrating the praises of the dead is 
an argument so worn out by long and fre- 
quent use, and now become so nauseous by the 
flattery that usually attends it, that it is no 
wonder if funeral orations, or panegyrics, are 
more considered for the elegance of style, and 
fineness of wit, than for the authority they 
carry with them as to the truth of matters of 
fact. And yet I am not hereby deterred from 
meddHng with this kind of argument, nor 
from handling it with all the plainness I can ; 
delivering only what I myself heard and saw, 
without any borrowed ornament. I do easily 
foresee how many will be engaged, for the 
support of their impious maxims and immoral 
practices, to disparage what I am to write. 
Others will censure it because it comes from 
one of my profession ; too many supposing 
us to be induced to frame such discourses for 
carrying on what they are pleased to call our 
trade. Some will think I dress it up too arti- 
R 3 



186 PllEFACE. 

ficially ; and others, that I present it too plain 
and naked. 

But, being resolved to govern myself by 
the exact rules of truth, I shall be less con- 
cerned in the censures I may fall under. It 
may seem liable to great exceptiou that I 
should disclose so many things that were dis- 
covered to me, if not under the seal of con- 
fession, yet under the confidence of friend- 
ship. But this noble lord himself not only 
released me from all obligations of this kind, 
when I waited on him in his last sickness, a 
few days before he died, but gave it me in 
charge not to spare him in any thing which I 
thought might be of use to the living ; and 
was not ill pleased to be laid open, as well in 
the worst as in the best and last part of his 
life, being so sincere in his repentance, that 
he was not unwilling to take shame to him- 
self, by suffering his faults to be exposed for 
the benefit of others. 

I write with one great disadvantage, that I 
cannot reach his chief design without men- 
tioning some of his faults ; but I have touched 
them as tenderly as occasion would bear, and, 
I am sure, with much more softness than he 
desired, or would have consented unto, had I 
told him how I intended to manage this part. 
I have related nothing with personal reflections 



PREFACE. 187 

on any others concerned with him ; wishing 
rather that they themselves, reflecting on the 
sense he had of his former disorders, may be 
thereby led to forsake their own, than that 
they should be any ways reproached by what 
I write : and therefore, though he used very 
few reserves with me as to his course of life, 
yet, since others had a share in most parts 
of it, I shall relate nothing but what more 
immediately concerned himself; and shall say 
no more of his faults than is necessary to 
illustrate his repentance. 

The occasion that led me into so particular 
a knowledge of him, was an intimation, given 
me by a gentleman of his acquaintance, of 
his desire to see me. This was some time in 
October 1679, when he was slowly recovering 
out of a great disease. He had understood 
that I often attended on one well known to 
him, that died the summer before: he was 
also then entertaining himself, in that low 
state of his health, Avith the first part of the 
History of the Reformation, then newly come 
out, with which he seemed not ill pleased ; 
and we had accidentally met in two or three 
places some time before. These were the 
motives that led him to call for my company. 
After I had waited on him once or twice, he 
grew into that freedom with me, as to open 



188 PREFACE. 

to me all his thoughts, both of religion and 
morality, and to give me a full view of his 
past life ; and seemed not uneasy at my fre- 
quent visits. So, till he went from London, 
which was in the beginning of April, I waited 
on him often. As soon as I heard how ill he 
was^ and how much he was touched with a 
sense of his former life, I wrote to him, and 
received from him an answer, that, without 
my knowledge, was printed since his death, 
from a copy which one of his servants con- 
veyed to the press. In it there is so unde- 
served a value put on me, that it had been 
very indecent for me to have published it : 
yet that must be attributed to his civility and 
way of breeding : and indeed he was particu- 
larly known to so few of the clergy, that the 
good opinion he had of me is to be imputed 
only to his unacquaintance with others. 

My end in writing is so to discharge the last 
commands this lord left on me, as that it may 
be effectual to awaken those who run on to 
all the excesses of riot ; and that, in the midst 
of those heats which their lusts and passions 
raise in them, they may be a little wrought on 
by so great an instance of one who had run 
round the whole circle of luxury ; and, as Solo- 
mon says of himself, Whatsoever his eyes de- 
siredf he kept it not from them ; and withheld his 



PREFACE. 189 

heart from no joy. But, when he looked back 
on all that on which he had wasted his time 
and strength, he esteemed it ^vanity and vexa- 
tion of spirit : though he had both as much 
natural wit, and as much acquired by learn- 
ing, and both as much improved with thinking 
and study, as perhaps any libertine of the age ; 
yet, when he reflected on all his former courses, 
even before his mind was illuminated with 
better thoughts, he counted them madness 
and folly. But, when the powers of religion 
came to operate on him, then he added a de- 
testation to the contempt he formerly had of 
them, suitable to what became a sincere pe- 
nitent, and expressed himself in so clear and 
so calm a manner, so sensible of his failings 
towards his Maker and his Redeemer, that, 
as it wrought not a little on those that were 
about him, so, I hope, the making it public 
may have a more general influence, chiefly on 
those on whom his former conversation might 
have had ill eff'ects. 

I have endeavoured to give his character as 
fully as I could take it : for, I who saw him 
only in one light, in a sedate and quiet 
temper, when he was under a great decay of 
strength and loss of spirits, cannot give his 
picture with that life and advantage that 
others may who knew him when his parts 



190 PREFACE. 

were more bright and lively; yet the compo- 
sure he was then in may perhaps be supposed 
to balance any abatement of his usual vigour, 
which the declination of his health brought 
him under. I have written this discourse 
with as much care, and have considered it as 
narrowly, as I could. I am sure I have said 
nothing but truth ; I have done it slowly, and 
often used my second thoughts in it, not 
being so much concerned in the censures that 
might fall on myself, as cautious that nothing 
should pass that might obstruct my only 
design of writing, which is the doing what I 
can towards the reforming- a loose and lewd 
age. And if such a signal instance, concur- 
ring with all the evidence that we have for 
our most holy Faith, has no effect on those 
who are running the same course, it is much 
to be feared they are given up to a reprobate 
sense. 



SOME PASSAGES 
or 

THE LIFE 

OF 

JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 



John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was born 
in April, Anno Dom. 1648. His father was 
Henry Earl of Rochester, but best known by 
the title of the Lord Wilmot, who bore so great 
a part in all the late wars, that mention is often 
made of him in the history, and had the chief 
share in the honour of the preservation of his 
Majesty after Worcester fight, and the convey- 
ing him from place to place till he happily 
escaped into France ; but, dying before the 
King's return, he left his son little other in- 
heritance but the honour and title derived to 
him, with the pretensions such eminent ser- 
vices gave him to the King's favour : these 
were carefully managed by the great pru- 
dence and discretion of his mother, a daugh- 



192 THE LIFE OF 

ter of that noble and ancient family of the 
St.-Johns, of Wiltshire, so that his education 
was carried on in all things suitably to his 
quality. 

When he was at school, he was an extraor- 
dinary proficient at his book; and those 
shining parts, which since have appeared 
with so much lustre, began then to show 
themselves. He acquired the Latin to such 
perfection, that to his dying day he retained 
a great relish of the fineness and beauty of 
that tongue, and was exactly versed in the 
incomparable authors that wrote about Au- 
gustus's time, whom he read often with that 
peculiar delight which the greatest wits have 
ever found in those studies. 

When he went to the university, the gene- 
ral joy, which overran the whole nation upon 
his Majesty's restoration, but was not regu- 
lated with that sobriety and temperance that 
became a serious gratitude to God for so 
great a blessing, produced some of its ill 
effects upon him : he began to love these 
disorders too much. His tutor was that emi- 
nent and pious divine^ Dr. Blandford, after- 
wards promoted to the sees of Oxford and 
Worcester ; and, under his inspection, he was 
committed to the more immediate care of Mr. 
Phineas Berry, a Fellow of Wadham College, 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 193 

a very learned and good-natured man, whom 
he afterwards ever used with much respect, 
and rewarded him as became a great man. 
But the humour of that time wrought so 
much on him, that he broke off the course of 
his studies, to which no means could ever 
effectually recall him, till, when he was in 
Italy, his governor, Dr. Balfour, a learned 
and worthy man, afterwards a celebrated phy- 
sician in Scotland, his native country, drew 
him to read such books as were most likely 
to bring him back to love learning and study ; 
and he often acknowledged to me, in particu- 
lar three days before his death, how much he 
was obliged to love and honour this his go- 
vernor, to whom he thought he owed more 
than to all the world, next after his parents, 
for his great fidelity and care of him while he 
was under his trust. But no part of it affect- 
ed him more sensibly than that he engaged 
him by many tricks, so he expressed it, to 
delight in books and reading; so that ever 
after he took occasion, in the intervals of 
those woeful extravagances that consumed 
most of his time, to read much ; and, though 
the time was generally but indifferently em- 
ployed, for the choice of the subjects of his 
studies was not always good, yet the habitual 
love of knowledge, together with these fits of 



194 THE LIFE OF 

study, had much awakened his understand- 
ing, and prepared him for better things, when 
his mind should be so far changed as to 
relish them. 

He came from his travels in the eighteenth 
year of his age, and appeared at court with 
as great advantages as most ever had. He 
was a graceful and well-shaped person, tall, 
and well made, if not a little too slender : he 
was exactly well bred ; and, what by a modest 
behaviour natural to him, what by a civility 
become almost as natural, his conversation 
was easy and obliging. He had a strange 
vivacity of thought and vigour of expression : 
his wit had a subtilty and sublimity both, 
that were scarce imitable. His style was 
clear and strong ; when he used figures, they 
were very lively, and yet far enough out of 
the common road. He had made himself 
master of the ancient and modern wit, and of 
the modern French and Italian as well as the 
English. He loved to talk and write of spe- 
culative matters ; and did it with so fine a 
thread, that even those, who hated the sub- 
jects that his fancy ran upon, yet could not 
but be charmed with his way of treating 
them. Boileau among the French, and Cow- 
ley among the English wits, were those he 
admired most. Sometimes other men's 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 195 

thoughts mixed with his composures ; but 
that flowed rather from the impressions they 
made on him when he read them, by which 
they came to return on him as his own 
thoughts, than that he servilely copied from 
any ; for few men ever had a bolder flight of 
fancy, more steadily governed by judgment, 
than he had. No wonder a young man so 
made and so improved, was very acceptable 
in a court. 

Soon after his coming thither he laid hold 
on the first occasion that offered to show his 
readiness to hazard his life in the defence 
and service of his country. In winter, 1665, 
he went with the Earl of Sandwich to sea, 
when he was sent to lie for the Dutch East 
India fleet; and was in the Revenge, com- 
manded by Sir Thomas Tiddiman, when the 
attack was made on the port of Bergen, in 
Norway, the Dutch ships having got into 
that port. It was as desperate an attempt 
as ever was made ; during the whole action, 
the Earl of Rochester showed as brave and 
as resolute a courage as was possible : a per- 
son of honour told me he heard the Lord 
Clifford, who was in the same ship, often 
magnify his courage at that time very highly. 
Nor did the rigours of the season, the hard- 
ness of the voyage, and the extreme danger 



196 THE LIFE OF 

he had been in, deter him from running the 
like on the very next occasion ; for the sum- 
mer following he went to sea again, without 
communicating his design to his nearest re- 
lations. He went on board the ship com- 
manded by Sir Edward Spragge, the day be- 
fore the great sea-fight of that year. Almost 
all the volunteers that were in the same ship 
were killed. Mr. Middleton (brother to Sir 
Hugh Middleton) was shot in the arm. Dur- 
ing the action, Sir Edward Spragge, not be- 
ing satisfied with the behaviour of one of his 
captains, could not easily find a person that 
would cheerfully venture through so much 
danger to carry his commands to that cap- 
tain. This lord offered himself to the 
service ; and went in a little boat, through 
all the shot, and delivered his message, and 
returned back to Sir Edward; which was 
much commended by all that saw it. He 
thought it necessary to begin his life with 
these demonstrations of courage, in an ele- 
ment and way of fighting which is acknow- 
ledged to be the greatest trial of clear and 
undaunted valour. 

He had so entirely laid down the intempe- 
rance that was growing on him before his 
travels, that at his return he hated nothing 
more. But, falling into company that loved 



John eaul of Rochester. 197 

these excesses, he was, though not without 
difficulty, and by many steps, brought back 
to it again. And the natural heat of his 
fancy, being inflamed by wine, made him so 
extravagantly pleasant, that many, to be 
more diverted by that humour, studied to 
engage him deeper and deeper in intempe- 
rance ; which at length did so entirely sub- 
due him, that, as he told me, for five years 
together he was continually drunk ; not all 
the while under the visible effects of it, but 
his blood was so inflamed, that he was not, 
in all that time, cool enough to be perfectly 
master of himself. This led him to say and 
do many wild and unaccountable things : by 
this, he said, he had broken the firm consti- 
tution of his health, that seemed so strong 
that nothing was too hard for it; and he had 
suffered so much in his reputation, that he 
almost despaired to recover it. There were 
two principles in his natural temper that, 
being heightened by that heat, carried him 
to great excesses : a violent love of pleasure, 
and a disposition to extravagant mirth. The 
one involved him in great sensuality; the 
other led him to many odd adventures and 
frolics, in which he was oft in hazard of his 
life : the one being the same irregular appe- 
tite in his mind that the other was in his 
s 3 



198 THE LIFE OF 

body, which led him to think nothing divert- 
ing that was not extravagant. And though, 
in cold blood, he was a generous and good- 
natured man, yet he would go far, in his 
heats, after any thing that might turn to a 
jest or matter of diversion. He said to me, 
he never improved his interest at court to do 
a premeditate mischief to other persons. Yet 
he laid out his wit very freely in libels and 
satires, in which he had a peculiar talent of 
mixing his wit with his malice, and fitting 
both with such apt words, that men were 
tempted to be pleased with them : from 
thence his composures came to be easily 
known, for few had such a way of tempering 
these together as he had ; so that, when any 
thing extraordinary that way came out, as a 
child is fathered sometimes by its resem- 
blance, so it was laid at his door as its pa- 
rent and author. 

These exercises in the course of his life 
were not always equally pleasant to him ; he 
had often sad intervals and severe reflections 
on them : and, though then he had not these 
awakened in him by any deep principle of 
religion, yet the horror that nature raised in 
him, especially in some sicknesses, made him 
too easy to receive some ill principles which 
others endeavoured to possess him with ; so 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 199 

that he was too soon brought to set himself 
to secure and fortify his mind against that, 
by dispossessing it all he could of the belief 
or apprehensions of religion. The licentious- 
ness of his temper, with the briskness of his 
wit, disposed him to love the conversation of 
those who divided their time between lewd 
actions and irregular mirth. And so he came 
to bend his wit, and direct his studies and 
endeavours, to support and strengthen these 
ill principles in himself and others. 

An accident fell out after this which con- 
firmed him more in these courses. When he 
went to sea in the year 1665, there happened 
to be in the same ship with him, Mr. Monta- 
gue and another gentleman of quality. These 
two, the former especially, seemed persuaded 
that they should never return into England : 
Mr. Montague said he was sure of it ; the 
other was not so positive. The Earl of Ro- 
chester and the last of these entered into a 
formal engagement, not without ceremonies of 
religion, that if either of them died, he should 
appear, and give the other notice of the future 
state, if there was any ; but Mr. Montague 
would not enter into the bond. When the 
day came that they thought to have taken 
the Dutch fieet in the port of Bergen, Mr. 
Montague, though he had such a strong pre- 



^00 THE LIFE OV 

sage in his mind of his approaching death, 
yet he generously stayed all the while in the 
place of greatest danger. The other gentle- 
man signalized his courage in a most un- 
daunted manner till near the end of the ac- 
tion, when he fell on a sudden into such a 
trembling, that he could scarcely stand; and, 
Mr. Montague going to him to hold him up, 
as they were in each other's arms, a cannon- 
ball killed him outright, and carried away 
Mr. Montague's belly, so that he died within 
an hour after. The Earl of Rochester told 
me that these presages they had in their minds 
made some impression on him, that there 
were separated beings ; and that the soul, 
either by a natural sagacity or some secret 
notice communicated to it, had a sort of divi- 
nation. But that gentleman's never appear- 
ing was a great snare to him during the rest 
of his life ; though, when he told me this, he 
could not but acknowledge it was an unrea- 
sonable thing for him to think, that beings in 
another state are not under such laws and 
limits that they could not command their own 
motions but as the Supreme Power should 
order them ; and that one, who had so cor- 
rupted the natural principles of truth as he 
had, had no reason to expect that such an 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 201 

extraordinary thing should be done for his 
conviction. 

He told me of another odd presage that 
one had of his approaching death in the Lady 
Warre's, his mother-in-law's, house. The 
chaplain had dreamt that such a day he should 
die ; but, being by all the family put out of 
the belief of it, he had almost forgot it ; till 
the evening before, at supper, there being 
thirteen at table, according to a fond conceit 
that one of these must sooq die, one of the 
young ladies pointed to him that he was to 
die. He remembering his dream, fell into 
some disorder ; and the Lady Warre reprov- 
ing him for his superstition, he said he was 
confident he was to die before morning ; but, 
he being in perfect health, it was not much 
minded. It was Saturday night, and he was 
to preach next day. He went to his chamber, 
and sat up late, as appeared by the burning 
of his candle ; and he had been preparing his 
notes for his sermon ; but was found dead in 
his bed the next morning. These things, he 
said, made him inclined to believe the soul 
was a substance distinct from matter ; and 
this often returned into his thoughts. But 
that which perfected his persuasion about it 
was, that, in the sickness which brought him. 



202 THE LIFE OF 

SO near death before I first knew him, when 
his spirits were so low and spent that he could 
not move nor stir, and he did not think to 
live an hour, he said his reason and judgment 
were so clear and strong, that from thence he 
was fully persuaded that death was not the 
spending or dissolution of the soul, but only 
the separation of it from matter. He had in 
sickness great remorses for his past life ; but 
he afterwards told me, they were rather 
general and dark horrors than any conviction 
of sinning against God . He was sorry he had 
lived so as to waste his strength so soon, or 
that he had brought such an ill name upon 
himself; and had an agony in his mind about 
it which he knew not well how to express; 
but at such times, though he complied with his 
friends in suffering divines to be sent for, he 
said he had no great mind to it, and that it was 
but a piece of his breeding to desire them to 
pray by him, in which he joined little himself. 
As to the Supreme Being, he had always 
some impression of one ; and professed often 
to me, that he had never known an entire 
atheist, who fully believed there was no God. 
Yet, when he explained his notion of this 
Being, it amounted to no more than a vast 
power, that had none of the attributes of 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTEK. 203 

goodness or justice we ascribe to the Deity. 
These were his thoughts about religion, as 
himself told me. For morality, he freely 
owned to me, that though he talked of it as 
a fine things yet this was only because he 
thought it a decent mode of speaking ; and 
that as they went always in clothes, though 
in their frolics they would have chosen some- 
times to have gone naked, if they had not 
feared the people, — so though some of them 
found it necessary, for human life, to talk of 
morality, yet he confessed they cared not for 
it, farther than the reputation of it was ne- 
cessary for their credit and affairs ; of which 
he gave me many instances : as their profess- 
ing and swearing friendship where they hated 
mortally ; their oaths and imprecations in 
their addresses to women, which they intend- 
ed never to make good ; the pleasure they 
took in defaming innocent persons, and 
spreading false reports of some, perhaps in 
revenge, because they could not engage them 
to comply with their ill designs ; the delight 
they had in making people quarrel ; their 
unjust usage of their creditors, and putting 
them off by any deceitful promise they could 
invent that might deliver them from present 
importunity. So that, in detestation of these 



204 THE LIFE OF 

courses, he would often break forth into such 
hard expressions concerning himself, as would 
be indecent for another to repeat. 

Such had been his principles and practices 
in a course of many years, which had almost 
quite extinguished the natural propensities in 
him to justice and virtue. He would often 
go into the country, and be for some months 
wholly employed in study, or the sallies of 
his wit, which he came to direct chiefly to 
satire/ And this he often defended to me, 
by saying there were some people that 
could not be kept in order or admonished but 
in this way. I replied, that it might be 
granted that a grave way of satire was some- 
times no unprofitable way of reproof; yet 
they, who used it only out of spite, and mixed 
lies with truth, sparing nothing that might 
adorn their poems or gratify their revenge, 
could not excuse that way of reproach by 
which the innocent often suffer ; since the 
most malicious things, if wittily expressed, 
might stick to and blemish the best men in the 
world ; and the malice of a libel could hardly 
consist with the charity of an admonition. 
To this he answered, a man could not write 
with life unless he were heated by revenge ; 
for to write a satire without resentments, upon 
the cold notions of philosophy, was as if a 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 205 

man would, in coid blood, cut men*s throats 
who had never offended him ; and he said the 
lies in these libels came often in as ornaments, 
that could not be spared without spoiling the 
beauty of the poem. 

For his other studies, they were divided 
between the comical and the witty writings of 
the ancients and moderns, the Roman au- 
thors and books of physic, which the ill state 
of health he was fallen into made more neces- 
sary to himself; and which qualified him for 
an odd adventure which I shall but just men- 
tion. Being under an unlucky accident, 
which obliged him to keep out of the way, he 
diso:uised himself so that his nearest friends 
could not have knov/n him, and set up in 
Tower-street for an Italian mountebank, 
where he practised physic some weeks not 
without success. In his latter years he read 
books of history more. He took pleasure to 
disguise himself as a porter, or as a beggar ; 
sometimes to follow some mean amours, which 
for the variety of them he affected. At other 
tim^es merely for diversion, he would go about 
in odd shapes, in which he acted his part so 
naturally, that even those who were in the se- 
cret, and saw him in these shapes, could per- 
ceive nothing by which he could be dis- 
covered. 



£06 THE LIFE OF 

I have now made the description of his for- 
mer life and principles as fully as I thought 
necessary to answer my end in writing, and 
yet with those reserves that 1 hope I have 
given no just cause of offence to any. I have 
said nothing but what I had from his own 
mouth, and have avoided the mentioning of 
the more particular passages of his life, of 
which he told me not a few : but, since others 
were concerned in them, whose good only I 
design, 1 will say nothing that may either 
provoke or blemish them. It is their refor- 
mation, not their disgrace, I desire. This 
tender consideration of others has made me 
suppress many remarkable and useful things 
he told me ; but, finding that, though I should 
name none, yet I must at least relate such 
circumstances as would give too great occa- 
sion for the reader to conjecture concerning 
the persons intended, right or wrong, either 
of which were inconvenient enough, I have 
chosen to pass them quite over. But I hope 
those, that know how much they were engaged 
with him in his ill courses, will be somewhat 
touched with this tenderness 1 express towards 
them, and be thereby the rather induced to 
reflect on their ways, and to consider, with- 
out prejudice or passion, what a sense this 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 207 

noble lord had of their case, when he came 
at last seriously to reflect upon his own. 

I now turn to those parts of this narrative 
wherein T myself bore some share, and which 
I am to deliver upon the observations I made 
after a long and free conversation with him 
for some months. I was not long in his com- 
pany when he told me he should treat me 
with more freedom than he had ever used to 
men of my profession ; he would conceal 
none of his principles from me, but lay his 
thoughts open without any disguise ; nor 
would he do it to maintain debate, or show 
his wit, but plainly tell me what stuck with 
him; and protested to me, that he was not 
so engaged to his old maxims as to resolve 
not to change, but that, if he could be con- 
vinced, he would choose rather to be of ano- 
ther mind. He said, he would impartially 
weigh what I should lay before him, and tell 
me freely when it did convince and when it 
did not. He expressed this disposition of 
mind to me in a manner so frank, that 1 
could not but believe him and be much taken 
with his way of discourse : so we entered into 
almost all the parts of natural and revealed 
religion, and of morality. He seemed 
pleased, and in a great measure satisfied, with 



208 THE LIFE OF 

what I said upon many of these heads ; and, 
though our freest conversation was when we 
were alone, yet upon several occasions other 
persons were witnesses to it. I understood 
from many hands that my company was not 
distasteful to him, and that the subjects about 
which we talked most were not unacceptable ; 
and he expressed himself often not ill pleased 
with many things I said to him, and particu- 
larly when 1 visited him in his last sickness ; 
so that I hope it may not be altogether un- 
profitable to publish the substance of those 
matters about which we argued so freely, 
with our reasoning upon them ; and perhaps 
what had some effects on him may be not 
altogether ineffectual upon others. I fol- 
lowed him with such arguments as I saw were 
most likely to prevail with him ; and my not 
urging other reasons proceeded not from any 
distrust I had of their force, but from the ne- 
cessity of using those that were most proper 
for him. He was then in a low staite of 
health, and seemed to be slowly recovering of 
a great disease. He was in the milk diet, 
and apt to fall into hectical fits ; any acci- 
dent weakened him, so that he thought he 
could not live long ; and, when he went from 
London, he said he believed he should never 
come to town more. Yet, during his being 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 209 

ill town, he was so well, that he went often 
abroad, and had great vivacity of spirit ; so 
that he was under no such decay as either 
darkened or weakened his understanding ; nor 
w^as he any way troubled with the spleen or 
vapours, or under the powder of melancholy. 
What he was then, compared to what he had 
been formerly, I could not so well judge, 
who had seen him but twice before. Others 
have told me they perceived no difference in 
his parts. This I mention more particularly, 
that it may not be thought that melancholy, 
or the want of spirits, made him more in- 
clined to receive any impressions ; for in- 
deed I never discovered any such thing in 
him. 

Having thus opened the way to the heads 
of our discourse, I shall next mention them. . 
The three chief things we talked about were 
morality, natural religion, and revealed reli- 
gion, Christianity in particular. For morali- 
ty, he confessed he saw the necessity of it, 
both for the government of the world, and 
for the preservation of health, life, and friend- 
ship ; and was very much ashamed of his 
former practices, rather because he had made 
himself a beast, and had brought pain and 
sickness on his body, and had suffered much 
in his reputation, than from any deep sense 
T 3 



210 THE LIFE OF 

of a Supreme Being or another state. But 
so far this went with him, that he resolved 
firmly to change the course of his life, which 
he thought he should effect by the study of 
philosophy, and had not a few no less solid 
than pleasant notions concerning the folly 
and madness of vice. But he confessed he 
had no remorse for his past actions as 
offences against God, but only as injuries to 
himself and to mankind. 

Upon this subject I showed him the defects 
of philosophy for reforming the world. That 
it was a matter of speculation, which but few 
either had the leisure or the capacity to in- 
quire into ; but the principle that must re- 
form mankind must be obvious to every 
man's understanding. That philosophy, in 
matters of morality, beyond the great lines of 
our duty, had no very certain fixed rule ; 
but, in the lesser offices and instances of our 
duty, went much by the fancies of men and 
customs of nations ; and consequently could 
not have authority enough to bear down the 
propensities of nature, appetite, or passion : 
for which I instanced in these two points ; 
the one was about that maxim of the Stoics, 
to extirpate all sort of passion and concern 
for any thing. That, take it by one hand, 
seemed desirable, because, if it could be ac- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTEB. 211 

complished, it would make all the accidents 
of life easy; but I think it cannot, because 
nature, after all our striving against it, will 
still return to itself: yet, on the other hand, 
it dissolved the bonds of nature and friend- 
ship, and slackened industry, which will 
move but dully without an inward heat ; and, 
if it delivered a man from any troubles, it de- 
prived him of the chief pleasures of life, 
which arise from friendship. The other was 
concerning the restraint of pleasure, how far 
that was to go. Upon this he told me the 
two maxims of his morality then were, that 
he should do nothing to the hurt of any 
other, or that might prejudice his own health; 
and he thought that all pleasure, when it did 
not interfere with these, was to be indulged 
as the gratification of our natural appetites. 
It seemed unreasonable to imagine^ these 
were put into a man only to be restrained, or 
curbed to such a narrowness : this he applied 
to the free use of wine and women. 

To this I answered, that, if appetites being 
natural was an argument for the indulging 
them, then the revengeful might as well al- 
lege it for murder, and the covetous for steal- 
ing, whose appetites are no less keen on those 
objects, and yet it is acknowledged that these 
appetites ought to be curbed. If the difFe- 



21£ THE LIFE OF 

rence is urged from the injury that another 
person receives, the injury is as great if a 
man's wife is defiled, or his daughter cor- 
rupted ; and it is impossible for a man to let 
his appetites loose to vagrant lusts, and not 
to transgress in these particulars : so there 
was no curing the disorders that must arise 
from thence but by regulating these appe- 
tites. And why should we not as well think 
that God intended our brutish and sensual 
appetites should be governed by our reason, 
as that the fierceness of beasts should be 
managed and tamed by the wisdom, and for 
the use of man ? So that it is no real absur- 
dity to grant, that appetites were put into 
men on purpose to exercise their reason in 
the restraint and government of them, which 
to be able to do ministers a higher and more 
lasting pleasure to a man than to give them 
their full scope and range. And^ if other 
rules of philosophy be observed, such as the 
avoiding those objects that stir passion, no- 
thing raises higher passions than ungoverned 
lust ; nothing darkens the understanding and 
depresses a man's mind more; nor is any 
thing managed with more frequent returns of 
other immoralities, such as oaths and impre- 
cations, which are only intended to compass 
what is desired : the expense, that is neces- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 213 

sary to maintain these irregularities, makes a 
man false in his other dealings. All this he 
freely confessed was true : upon which I 
urged, that, if it was reasonable for a man to 
regulate his appetite in things which he 
knew were hurtful to him, was it not as rea- 
sonable for God to prescribe a regulating of 
those appetites whose unrestrained course did 
produce such mischievous effects? That it 
could not be denied, but doing to others what 
we would have others do unto us was a just 
rule : those men, then, that knew how ex- 
tremely sensible they themselves would be of 
the dishonour of their famiUes, in the case of 
their wives or daughters, must needs condemn 
themselves for doing that which they could 
not bear from another : and, if the peace of 
mankind, and the entire satisfaction of our 
whole life^ ought to be one of the chief mea- 
sures of our actions, then let all the world 
judge, whether a man that confines his appe- 
tite and lives contented at home, is not much 
happier than those that let their desires run 
after forbidden objects. The thing being 
granted to be better in itself, then the ques- 
tion falls between the restraint of appetite in 
some instances, and the freedom of a man's 
thoughts, the soundness of his health, his 
application to affairs, with the easiness of his 



214 THE LIFE OF 

whole life : whether the one is not to be done 
before the other? As to the difficulty of 
such a restraint, though it is not easy to be 
Jone, when a man allows himself many liber- 
ties in which it is not possible for him to 
stop, yet those who avoid the occasions that 
may kindle these impure flames, and keep 
themselves well employed, find the victory 
and dominion over them no such impossible 
or hard matter as may seem at first view : so 
that, though the philosophy and morality of 
this point were plain, yet there is not strength 
enough in that principle to subdue nature 
and appetite. Upon this I urged, that mo- 
rality could not be a strong thing unless a 
man were determined by a law within him- 
self; for, if he only measured himself by de- 
cency, or the laws of the land," this would 
teach him only to use such caution in his ill 
practices, that they should not break out too 
visibly ; but would never carry him to an in- 
ward and universal probity. That virtue was 
of so complicated a nature, that, unless a 
man came entirely within its discipline, he 
could not adhere steadfastly to any one pre- 
cept ; for vices are often made necessary sup- 
ports to one another. That this cannot be 
done, either steadily or with any satisfaction, 
unless the mind does inwardly comply with, 



JOHN EARL OF KOCllESTKK. 215 

and delight in, the dictate, of virtue; and 
that could not be effected, except a man's 
nature were internally regenerated, and 
changed by a higher principle : till that came 
about, corrupt nature would be strong, and 
philosophy but feeble, especially when it 
struggled with such appetites or passions as 
were much kindled, or deeply rooted in the 
constitution of one's body. This, he said, 
sounded to him like enthusiasm, or canting : 
he had no notion of it, and so could not un- 
derstand it. He comprehended the dictates 
of reason and philosophy ; in which, as the 
mind became much conversant, there would 
soon follow, as he believed, a greater easiness 
in obeying its precepts. I told him on the 
other hand, that all his speculations of philo- 
sophy would not serve him in any stead to 
the reforming of his nature and life, till he 
applied himself to God for inward assistances. 
It was certain that the impressions made in 
his reason governed him as they were lively 
presented to him; but these are so apt to 
slip out of our memory, and we so apt to turn 
our thoughts from them, and at some times 
the contrary impressions are so strong, that, 
let a man set up a reasoning in his mind 
against them, he finds that celebrated saying 
of th^ poet — 



216 THE LIFE OF 

Video meliora^ proboque; deteriora sequor — 
^* I see what is better, and approve it; but 
follow what is worse'' — 

to be all that philosophy will amount to. 
Whereas those, who upon such occasions 
apply themselves to God by earnest prayer, 
feel a disengagement from such impressions, 
and themselves endued with a power to resist 
them ; so that those bonds, which formerly 
held them, fall off. 

This, he said, must be the effect of a heat 
in nature : it was only the strong diversion of 
the thoughts that gave the seeming victory ; 
and he did not doubt, but, if one could turn 
to a problem in Euclid, or to write a copy of 
verses, it would have the same effect. To 
this I answered, that if such methods did 
only divert the thoughts, there might be some 
force in what he said ; but, if they not only 
drove out such inclinations, but begat im- 
pressions contrary to them, and brought men 
into a new disposition and habit of mind, 
then he must confess there was somewhat 
more than a diversion in these changes, which 
were brought on our minds by true devotion. 
I added, that reason and experience were the 
things that determined our persuasions : that 
experience without reason may be thought 
the delusion of our fancy ; so reason without 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 217 

experience had not so convincing an opera- 
tion ; but these two meeting together, must 
needs give a man all the satisfaction he can 
desire. He could not say it was unreason- 
able to believe that the Supreme Being might 
make some thoughts stir in our minds with 
more or less force as it pleased: especially, 
the force of these motions being, for the most 
part, according to the impression that was 
made on our brains, which that Power, that 
directed the whole frame of nature, could 
make grow deeper as it pleased. It was also 
reasonable to suppose God a being of such 
goodness, that he would give his assistance to 
such as desired it; for though he might, 
upon some greater occasions, in an extraordi- 
nary manner turn some people's minds, yet 
since he had endued man with a faculty of 
reason, it is fit that men should employ that 
as far as they could, and beg his assistance, 
which certainly they can do. All this seem- 
ed reasonable, and at least probable. Now 
good men, who felt upon their frequent appli- 
cations to God in prayer, a freedom from 
those ill impressions that formerly subdued 
them, an inv/ard love to virtue and true good- 
ness, an easiness and delight in all the parts 
of holiness, which was fed and cherished in 
them by a seriousness in prayer, and did Ian* 
u 



.^18 THE LIFE OF 

giiish as that went off, had as real a percep- 
tion of an inward strength in their minds, 
that did rise and fall with true devotion, as 
they perceived the strength of their bodies in- 
creased or abated, according as they had or 
wanted good nourishment. 

After many discourses upon this subject, 
he still continued to think ail was the effect 
of fancy. He said that he understood 
nothing of it, but acknowledged that he 
thought they were very happy whose fancies 
were under the power of such impressions, 
since they had somewhat on which their 
thoughts rested and centered. But when 
I saw him in his last sickness, he then 
told me he had another sense of what we had 
talked concerning prayer and inward assist- 
ances. — This subject led us to discourse of 
God, and of the notion of religion in general. 
He believed there was a Supreme Being : he 
could not think the world was made by 
chance, and the regular course of nature 
seemed to demonstrate the eternal power of 
its Author. This, he said, he could never 
shake off; but, when he came to explain his 
notion of the Deity, he said, he looked on it 
as a vast power that wrought every thing by 
the necessity of its nature ; and thought that 
<jrod had none of those affections of love or 



JOHN EARL OY ROCHESTEIl. 219 

hatred which breed perturbation in us, and by 
consequence he could not see that there was 
to be either reward or punishment. He 
thought our conceptions of God were so low, 
that we had better not think much of him ; 
and to love God seemed to him a presump- 
tuous thin^, and the heat of fanciful men. 
Therefore he believed there should be no 
other religious worship but a general celebra- 
tion of that Being in some short hymn : all 
the other parts of worship he esteemed the 
inventions of priests, to make the world be- 
lieve they had a secret of incensing and appeas- 
ing God as they pleased. In a word, he was 
neither persuaded that there was a special 
providence about human affairs, nor that 
prayers were of much use^ since • that Vv as 
to look on God as a weak being that v/ould be 
overcome with importunities. And, for the 
state after death, though he thought the soul 
did not dissolve at death, yet he doubted 
much of rewards or punishments : the one he 
thought too high for us to attain by our 
slight services, and the other was too extreme 
to be inflicted for sin. This was the substance 
of his speculations about God and religion. 

I told him his notions of God were so low, 
that the Supreme Being seemed to be nothing 
but Nature. For, if that Being had no free- 



22(y THE LIFE OF 

dom nor choice of its own actions, nor operat- 
ed by wisdom or goodness, all those reasons 
which led him to acknowledge a God, were 
contrary to this conceit ; for if the order of 
the universe persuaded him to think there 
was a God, he must at the same time con- 
ceive him to be both wise and good, as well 
as powerful, since these all appeared equally 
in the creation, though his wisdom and good- 
ness had ways of exerting themselves that 
were far beyond our notions or measures. If 
God was wise and good, he would naturally 
love and be pleased with those that resemble 
him in these perfections, and dislike those 
that were opposite to him. Es^ery rational 
being naturally loves itself, and is delighted in 
others like itself, and is averse from what is 
not so. Truth is a rational nature's acting in 
conformity to itself in all things, and good- 
ness is an inclination to promote the happi- 
ness of other beings ; so truth and goodness 
were the essential perfections of every reason- 
able being, and certainly most eminently in 
the Deity. Nor does his mercy or love raise 
passion or perturbation in him ; for we feel 
that to be a weakness in ourselves, which in- 
deed only flows from our want of power or 
skill to do what we wish or desire. It is also 
reasonable to believe God would assist the 



JOHN EARL OF llOCHESTRll. 221 

endeavours of the good with some helps suit- 
able to their nature ; and that it could not be 
imagined that those who imitated him should 
not be specially favoured by him ; and there- 
fore, since this did not appear in this state, it 
was most reasonable to think it should be in 
another, where the rewards shall be an admis- 
sion to a more perfect state of conformity to 
God, with the felicity that follows it ; and the 
punishments should be a total exclusion from 
him, with all the horror and darkness that must 
follow that. These seemed to be the natural 
results of such several courses of life, as well 
as the effects of divine justice, rewarding or 
punishing. For, since he believed the soul 
had a distinct substance, separated from the 
body; upon its dissolution, there was no rea- 
son to think it passed into a state of utter 
oblivion of what it had been in formerly : but 
that, as the reflections on the good or evil it 
had done must raise joy or horror in it, so, 
those good or ill dispositions accompanying 
the departed souls, they must either rise up to a 
higher perfection, or sink to a more depraved 
and miserable state. In this life variety of 
affairs and objects do much cool and divert 
our minds ; and are, on the one hand, often 
great temptations to the good, and give the 
bad some ease in their trouble ; but, in a state 
u 3 



222 THE LIFE OF 

wherein the soul shall be separated from sen- 
sible things, and employed in a more quick 
and sublime way of operation, this must very 
much exalt the joys and improvements of 
the good, and as much heighten the horror 
and rage of the wicked. So that it seemed a 
vain thing to pretend to believe a Supreme 
Being, that is wise and good, as well as great, 
and not to think a discrimination will be made 
between the good and bad, which it is mani- 
fest is not fully done in this life. 

As for the government of the world, if we 
believe the Supreme Power made it, there is 
no reason to think he does not govern it; for 
all that we can fancy against it is the distrac- 
tion which that infinite variety of second 
causes, and the care of their concernments, 
must give to the first, if it inspects them all. 
But as among men, those of weaker capaci- 
ties are wholly taken up with some one thing, 
whereas those of more enlarged powers can 
without distraction have many things within 
their care,- — as the eye can at one view receive 
a great variety of objects in that narrow com- 
pass without confusion, — so, if we conceive 
the divine understanding to be as far above 
ours as his power of creating and framing 
the whole universe is above our limited acti- 
vity, we shall no more think the government 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 223 

of the world a distraction to him ; and if we 
have once overcome this prejudice, we shall 
be ready to acknowledge a providence direct- 
ing all affairs, a care well becoming the Great 
Creator. 

As for worshipping him, if we imagine our 
worship is a thing that adds to his happiness, 
or gives him such a fond pleasure as weak 
people have to hear themselves commended, 
or that our repeated addresses do overcome 
him through our mere importunity, we have 
certainly very unworthy thoughts of him. 
The true ends of worship come within another 
consideration, which is this : a man is never 
entirely reformed till a new principle governs 
his thoughts ; nothing makes that principle 
so strong as deep and frequent meditations of 
God, whose nature, though it be far above 
our comprehension, yet his goodness and wis- 
dom are such perfections as fall within our 
imagination : and he that thinks often of 
God, and considers him as governing the 
world, and as ever observing all his actions, 
will feel a very sensible effect of such medita- 
tions, as they grow more lively and frequent 
with him; so the end of religious worship, 
either public or private, is to make the appre- 
hensions of God have a deeper root and a 
stronger influence on us. The frequent re* 



2'24f THE LIFE OF 

turns of these are necessary, lest, if we allow of 
too long intervals between them, these impres- 
sions may grow feebler, and other suggestions 
may come in their room ; and the returns of 
prayer are not to be considered as favours 
extorted by mere importunity, but as rewards 
conferred on men so well disposed and pre- 
pared for them, according to the promises that 
God has made for answering our prayers ; 
thereby to engage and nourish a devout tem- 
per in us, which is the chief root of all true 
holiness and virtue. 

It is true, we cannot have suitable notions 
of the divine essence ; as indeed we have no 
just idea of any essence whatsoever, since we 
commonly consider all things either by their 
outward figure oi by their effects, and from 
thence make inferences what their nature 
must be : so, though we cannot frame any 
perfect image in our minds of the divinity, 
yet we may, from the discoveries God has 
made of himself, form such conceptions of 
him, as may possess our minds with great re- 
verence for him, and beget in us such a love 
of those perfections as to engage us to imi- 
tate them. For, when we say we love God, 
the meaning is, we love that being that is 
holy, just, good, wise, and infinitely perfect : 
and loving these attributes in that object will 



JOHN EAllL OF llOCHESTEll. 225 

certainly carry us to desire them in ourselves. 
For, whatever we love in another, we naturally, 
according to the degree of our love, endea- 
vour to resemble it. In sum, the loving and 
worshipping God, though they are just and 
reasonable returns and expressions of the 
sense we have of his goodness to us, yet they 
are exacted of us not only as a tribute to 
God, but as a mean to beget in us a confor- 
mity to his nature, which is the chief end of 
pure and undefiled religion. 

If some men have at several times found 
out inventions to corrupt this, and cheat the 
world, it is nothing but what occurs in every 
sort of employment to which men betake 
themselves : mountebanks corrupt physic ; 
pettifoggers have entangled the matters of 
property ; and all professions have been vi- 
tiated by the knaveries of a number of their 
calling. 

With all these discourses he was not equally 
satisfied : he seemed convinced that the im- 
pressions of God being much in men's minds 
would be a powerful means to reform the 
world ; and did not seem determined against 
providence ; but, for the next state, he thought 
it more likely that the soul began anew, and 
that, her sense of what she had done in this 
bodv Ivino" in the fiofures that are made in the 



226 THE LIFE OE 

brain, as soon as she dislodged, all these pe- 
rished, and that the soul went into some other 
state, to begin a new course. But I said, on 
this head, that this was at best a conjecture, 
raised in him by his fancy ; for he could give 
no reason to prove it true : nor was all the re- 
membrance our souls had of past things seat- 
ed in some material figures lodged in the 
brain ; though it could not be denied but a 
great deal of it lay in the brain. That we 
have many abstracted notions and ideas of 
immaterial things which depend not on bodily 
figures : some sins, such as falsehood and 
ill-nature, were seated in the mind, as lust 
and appetite were in the body ; and, as the 
whole body was the receptacle of the soul, 
and the eyes and ears were the organs of 
seeing and hearing, so was the brain the seat 
of memory : yet the power and faculty of 
memory, as well as of seeing and hearing, lay 
in the mind ; and so it was no unconceivable 
thing that either the soul, by its own strength, 
or by the means of some subtiler organs 
which might be fitted for it in another state, 
should still remember as well as think. But 
indeed we know so little of the nature of 
our souls, that it is a vain thing for us to raise 
an hypothesis out of the conjectures we have 
about it, or to reject one because of some 



JOHN KARL OF KOCHKSTER. %9.1 

difficulties that occur to us ; since it is as hard 
to understand how we remember things now 
as how we shall do it in another state : only 
we are sure we do it now : and so we shall be 
then, when we do it. 

When I pressed him with the secret joys 
that a good man felt, particularly as he drew 
near death, and the horrors of ill men, espe- 
cially at that time, he was willing to ascribe 
it to the impressions they had from their 
education : but he often confessed, that, 
w4i ether the business of religion was true or 
not, he thought those who had the per- 
suasions of it, and lived so that they had 
quiet in their consciences, and believed God 
governed the world, and acquiesced in his 
providence, and had the hope of an endless 
blessedness in another state, the happiest 
men in the world ; and said, he would give 
all that he was master of, to be under those 
persuasions, and to have the supports and 
joys that must needs flow from them. I told 
him, the main root of all corruptions in men's 
principles was their ill life ; which, as it 
darkened their minds, and disabled them 
from discerning better things, so it made it 
necessary for them to seek out such opinions 
as might give them ease from those clamours 
that would otherwise have been raised within 



228 THE LIFE OF 

them. He did not deny, but that, after the 
doing of some things, he felt great and severe 
challenges within himself; but he said, he 
felt not these after some others which I 
would perhaps call far greater sins than 
those that affected him more sensibly. This, 
I said, might flow from the disorders he had 
cast himself into, which had corrupted his 
judgment, and vitiated his taste of things ; 
and, by his long continuance in, and frequent 
repeating of, some immoralities, he had made 
them so familiar to him, that they were 
become as it were natural ; and then it was 
no wonder if he had not so exact a sense of 
what was good or evil; as a feverish man 
cannot judge of tastes. 

He did acknowledge, the whole system of 
religion, if believed, was a greater foundation 
of quiet than any other thing whatsoever ; 
for all the quiet he had in his mind was, that 
he could not think so good a being as the 
Deity would make him miserable. I asked, 
if, when by the ill course of his life he had 
brought so many diseases on his body, he 
could blame God for it, or expect that he 
should deliver him from them by a miracle. 
He confessed there was no reason for that. 
I then urged, that, if sin should cast the 
mind, by a natural effect, into endless hor- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 229 

tors and agonies, which, being seated in a 
being not subject to death, must last for ever, 
unless some miraculous power interposed, 
could he accuse God for that which was the 
effect of his own choice and ill life ? 

He said, they were happy that believed; 
for it was not in every man*s power. 

And upon this we discoursed long about 
revealed religion. He said, he did not un- 
derstand the business of Inspiration : he 
believed the penmen of the scriptures had 
heats and honesty, and so wrote ; but could 
not comprehend how God should reveal his 
secrets to mankind. VVhy was not man 
made a creature more disposed for religion, 
and better illuminated ? He could not appre- 
hend how there should be any corruption in 
the nature of man, or a lapse derived from 
Adam. God's communicating his mind to 
one man was the putting it in his power to 
.cheat the world : for prophecies and miracles, 
the world had been always full of strange 
stories; for, the boldness and cunning of 
contrivers meeting with the simplicity and 
credulity of the people, things were easily 
received ; and, being once received, passed 
down without contradiction. The incoheren- 
ces of style in the scriptures, the odd tran- 
sitions, the seeming contradictions, chiefly 

X 



230 THE LIFE OF 

about the order of time, the cruelties enjoined 
the Israelites in destroying the Canaanites, 
circumcision, and many other rites of the 
Jewish worship, seemed to him unsuitable to 
the divine nature ; and the first three chap- 
ters of Genesis he thought could not be 
true, unless they were parables. This was the 
substance of what he excepted to revealed re- 
ligion in general, and to the Old Testament 
in particular. 

I answered to all this, that believing a 
thing upon the testimony of another, in other 
matters where there was no reason to suspect 
the testimony, chiefly where it was confirmed 
by other circumstances, was not only a rea- 
sonable thing, but it was the hinge on which 
all the government and justice in the world 
depended ; since all courts of justice proceed 
upon the evidence given by witnesses ; for the 
use of writings is but a thing more lately 
brought into the world. So then, if the cre- 
dibility of the thing, the innocence and disin- 
terestedness of the witnesses, the number of 
them, and the most public confirmations that 
could possibly be given, do concur to persuade 
us of any matter of fact, it is a vain thing 
io say, because it is possible for so many 
men to agree in a lie, that therefore these 
have done it. In all other thinsrs a man 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 231 

gives his assent when the credibility is strong 
on the one side, and there appears nothing on 
the other side to balance it. So, such num- 
bers agreeing in their testimony to these mi- 
racles, for instance, of our Saviour's calling 
Lazarus out of the grave the fourth day after 
he v^as buried, and his own rising again after 
he was certainly dead — ^if there had been 
never so many impostures in the world, no man 
can with any reasonable colour pretend this 
was one. We find, both by the Jewish and 
Koman writers that lived in that time, that 
our Saviour was crucified, and that all his 
disciples and followers believed certainly that 
he rose again. They believed this upon the 
testimony of the apostles, and of many hun- 
dreds who saw it and died confirming it. 
They went about to persuade the world of it 
with great zeal, though they knew they were 
to get nothing by it but reproach and suffer- 
ings ; and by many wonders which they 
wrought, they confirmed their testimony. 
Now, to avoid all this, by saying it is possible 
this might be a contrivance, and to give no 
presumption to make it so much as probable 
that it was so, is, in plain English, to say, 
^' we are resolved, let the evidence be what it 
will, we will not believe it.'^ 

He said, if a man savs he cannot believe. 



232 THE LIFE OF 

what help is there ? for he was not master of 
his own belief, and believing was at highest 
but a probable opinion. To this I answered, 
that, if a man will let a wanton conceit pos- 
sess his fancy against these things, and never 
consider the evidence for religion on the other 
hand, but reject it upon a slight view of it, he 
ought not to say he cannot, but he will not, 
believe : and, while a man lives an ill course 
of life, he is not fitly qualified to examine the 
matter aright. Let him grow calm and vir- 
tuous, and, upon due application, examine 
things fairly, and then let him pronounce ac- 
cording to his conscience, if, to take it at its 
lowest, the reasons on the one hand are not 
much stronger than they are on the other. 
For I found he was so possessed with the ge- 
neral conceit, that a mixture of knaves and 
fools had made all extraordinary things be 
easily believed, that it carried him away to 
determine the matter, without so much as 
looking on the historical evidence for the 
truth of Christianity, which he had not in- 
quired into, but had bent all his wit and study 
to the support of the other side. As for that, 
that believing is at best but an opinion ; if 
the evidence be but probable, it is so ; but, if 
it be such that it cannot be questioned, it 
grows as certain as knowledge : for we are 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 233 

no less certain that there is a great town 
called Constantinople, the seat of the Otto- 
man empire, than that there is another called 
London. W^ as little doubt that Queen Eli- 
zabeth once reigned, as that King Charles 
now [in 1680] reigns in England. So that 
believing may be as certain, and as little sub- 
ject to doubting, as seeing or knowing. 

There are two sorts of believing divine mat- 
ters ; the one is wrought in us by our com- 
paring all the evidences of matter of fact, for 
the confirmation of revealed religion, with the 
prophecies in the scripture ; where^ things 
were punctually predicted, some ages before 
their completion ; not in dark and doubtful 
words, uttered like oracles, which might bend 
to any event ; but in plain terms, as the fore- 
telling that Cyrus byname should send the 
Jews back from the captivity, after the fixed 
period of seventy years ; the history of the 
Syrian and Egyptian kings, so punctually 
foretold by Daniel ; and the prediction of the 
destruction of Jerusalem, with many circum- 
stances relating to it, made by our Saviour ; 
joining these to the excellent rule and design 
of the scripture in matters of morality^ it is 
at least as reasonable to believe this as any 
thing else in the world. Yet such a believing 
as this is only a general persuasion in the 
X S 



234 THE LIFE OF 

mind, which has not that effect, till a man, 
applying himself to the directions set down in 
the scriptures, — which, upon such evidence^ 
cannot be denied to be as reasonable as for a 
man to follow the prescriptions of a learned 
physician, and, when the rules are both good 
and easy, to submit to them for the recovery 
of his health, — and following these, finds a 
power entering within him, that frees him 
from the slavery of his appetites and passions, 
that exalts his mind above the accidents of 
life, and spreads an inward purity in his 
heart, from which a serene and calm joy arises 
within him : and good men, by the efficacy 
these methods have upon them, and from the 
returns of their prayers, and other endeavours, 
grow assured that these things are true and 
answerable to the promises they find regis- 
tered in scripture. All this, he said, might 
be fancy : but to this I answered, that, as it 
were unreasonable to tell a man that is abroad 
and knows he is awake, that perhaps he is in 
a dream and in his bed, and only thinks he is 
abroad ; or that as some go about in their 
sleep, so he may be asleep still ; so good and 
religious men know, though others may be 
abused by their fancies, that they are under 
no such deception ; and find they are neither 
hot nor enthusiastical, but under the power of 



JOHN EARL OF llOCH ESTER. 235 

calm and clear principles. All this, he said, 
he did not understand ; and that it was to 
assert or beg the thing in question ; which he 
could not comprehend. 

As for the possibility of revelation, it was a 
vain thing to deny it ; for, as God gives us the 
sense of seeing material objects by our eyes, 
and has opened in some a capacity of appre- 
hending high and sublime things, of which 
other men seemed utterly incapable ; so it was 
a weak assertion that God cannot awaken a 
power, in some men's minds, to apprehend 
and know some things in such a manner that 
Others are not capable of it. This is not half 
so incredible to us as sight is to a bhnd man ; 
who yet may be convinced there is a strange 
power of seeing that governs men, of which 
he finds himself deprived. As for the capa- 
city put into such men's hands to deceive the 
world, we are at the same time to consider? 
that, besides the probity of their tempers, it 
cannot be thought but God can so forcibly 
bind up a man, in some things, that it should 
not be in his power to deliver them, otherwise 
than as he gives him in commission. Besides, 
the confirmation of miracles is a divine cre- 
dential to warrant such persons in what they 
deliver to the world, which cannot be ima- 
gined can be joined to a lie, since this were 



236 THE LIFE OF 

to put the omnipotence of God to attest that 
which no honest man will do. For the busi- 
ness of the fall of man, and other things, of 
which we cannot perhaps give ourselves a 
perfect account, we, who cannot fathom the 
secrets of the council of God, do very unrea* 
sonably take on us to reject an excellent 
system of good and holy rules, because we 
cannot satisfy ourselves about some difficul- 
ties in them. Common experience tells us, 
there is a great disorder in our natures, 
which is not easily rectified : all philosophers 
v/ere sensible of it, and every man that designs 
to govern himself by reason feels the struggle 
between it and nature : so that it is plain 
there is a lapse of the high powers of the soul. 
But w^hy, said he, could not this be recti- 
fied by some plain rules given ; but men must 
come and show a trick, to persuade the world 
they speak to them in the name of God ? I 
answered, that religion, being a design to re- 
cover and save mankind, was to be so opened 
as to awaken and work upon all sorts of peo- 
ple ; and generally men of a simplicity of mind 
were those that were the fittest objects for 
God to show his favour to ; therefore it was 
necessary that messengers sent from heaven 
should appear with such alarming evidences 
as might awaken the world, and prepare them, 



JOHN EAllL OF ROCllESTEll. 2S7 

by some astonishing signs, to listen to the 
doctrine they were to deliver. Philosophy, 
that was only a matter of fine speculation, 
had few votaries ; and, as there was no autho- 
rity in it to bind the world to believe its dic- 
tates^ so they were only received by some of 
nobler and refined natures, who could apply 
themselves to, and delight in, such notions. 
But true religion was to be built on a founda- 
tion that should carry more weight on it, and 
to have such convictions as might not only 
reach those who were already disposed to re- 
ceive them, but rouse up such as, without 
great and sensible excitation, would have other- 
wise slept on in their ill courses. 

Upon this and some such occasions, I told 
him, I saw the ill use he made of his wit, by 
which he slurred the gravest things with a 
slight dash of his fancy ; and the pleasure he 
found in such wanton expressions, as calling 
the doing of miracles the showing of a tricky 
did really keep him from examining them with 
that care which such things required. 

For the Old Testament, we are so remote 
from that time, we have so little knowledge of 
the language in which it was written, have so 
imperfect an account of the history of those 
ages, know nothing of their customs, forms of 
speech, and the several periods they might 



238 THE LIFE OF 

have by which they reckoned their time, that 
it is rather a wonder we should understand so 
much of it, than that many passages in it 
should be so dark to ns. The chief use it has 
to us Christians, is, that, from writings which 
the Jews acknowledged to be divinely inspired, 
it is manifest the Messiah w^as promised before 
the destruction of their temple ; which being 
done long ago, and these prophecies agreeing 
to our Saviour, and to no other, here is a 
great confirmation given to the gospel. But, 
though many things ia these books could not 
be understood by us who live above 3000 
years after the chief of them were written, it 
is no such extraordinary matter. 

For that of the destruction of the Canaan- 
ites by the Israelites, it is to be considered, 
that, if God had sent a plague among them 
all, that could not have been found fault with. 
If then God had a right to take away their 
lives without injustice or cruelty, he had a 
right to appoint others to do it, as well as to 
execute it by a more immediate way ; and the 
taking away people by the sword is a much 
gentler way of dying than to be smitten with 
a plague or a famine. And, for the children 
that were innocent of their fathers' faults, God 
could ia another state make that up to them. 
So all the difficulty is, why were the Israelites 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 28r> 

commanded to execute a thing of such barba- 
rity ? But this will not seem so hard, if we 
consider that this was to be no precedent for 
future times ; since they did not do it but upon 
special warrant and commission from heaven, 
evidenced to all the world by such mighty 
miracles as did plainly show that they were 
particularly designed by God to be the exe- 
cutioners of his justice ; and God, by employ- 
ing tliem in so severe a service, intended to 
possess them with great horror of idolatry, 
which was punished in so extreme a manner. 
For the rites of their religion, we can ill 
judge of them, except we perfectly understood 
the idolatries round about them, to which we 
find they were much inclined : so they were 
to be bent by other rites to an extreme aver- 
sion from them : and yet, by the pomp of 
many of their ceremonies and sacrifices, great 
indulgences were given to a people naturally 
fond of a visible splendour in religious wor- 
ship. In all which, if we cannot descend to 
such satisfactory answers, in every particu- 
lar, as a curious man would desire, it is no 
wonder. The long interval of time, and other 
accidents, have worn out those things which 
were necessary to give us a clearer light into 
the meaning of them. And for the story of 
the creation, how far some things in it may 



^40 THE LIFE OF 

be parabolical J and how far historical, has 
been much disputed : there is nothing in it 
that may not be historically true : for, if it 
be acknowledged that spirits can form voices 
in the air, for which we have as good autho- 
rity as for any thing in history, then it is no 
wonder that Eve, being so lately created, 
might be deceived, and think a serpent spake 
to her J when the evil spirit framed the voice. 
But, in all these things, I told him he was 
in the wrong way, when he examined the bu- 
siness of religion by some dark parts of scrip- 
ture ; therefore I desired him to consider the 
whole contexture of the Christian religion, 
the rules it gives, and the methods it pre- 
scribes. Nothing can conduce more to the 
peace, order, and happiness of the world, 
than to be governed by its rules. Nothing 
is more for the interests of every man in par- 
ticular : the rules of sobriety, temperance, 
and moderation, were the best preservers of 
life, and, which was perhaps more, of health ; 
humility, contempt of the vanities of the 
world, and the being well employed, raise 
a man's mind to a freedom from the follies 
and temptations that haunted the greatest 
part of it. Nothing was so generous and 
great as to supply the necessities of the poor 
and to forgive injuries ; nothing raised and 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 241 

maintained a man's reputation so much as 
to be exactly just and merciful, kind, cha- 
ritable, and compassionate; nothing opened 
the powers of a man's soul so much as a 
calm temper, a serene mind, free of passion 
and disorder ; nothing made societies, fami- 
lies, and neighbourhoods, so happy, as when 
these rules, which the Gospel prescribes, took 
place, of doing as we would have others do to 
us, and loving our neighbours as ourselves. 

The Christian worship was also plain and 
simple, suitable to so pure a doctrine. The 
ceremonies of it were few and significant, as 
the admision to it by a washing with water, 
and the memorial of our Saviour's death in 
bread and v/ine. The motives in it to per- 
suade to this purity were strong : that God 
sees us, and will judge us for all our actions : 
that we shall be for ever happy or miserable 
as we pass our lives here : the example of our 
Saviour's life, and the great expressions of his 
love in dying for us, are mighty engagements 
to obey and imitate him. The plain way of ex- 
pression used by our Saviour and his apostles, 
shows there was no artifice, where there was so 
much simplicity used : there were no secrets 
kept only among the priests, but every thing 
was open to all Christians: the rewards of 
holiness are not entirely put over to another 

Y 



^-12 THE LIFE OF 

state, but good men are specially blest with 
peace in their consciences, great joy in the con- 
fidence they have of the love of God, and of 
seeing him for ever, and often a signal course 
of blessings follows them in their whole lives ; 
but if at other times calamities fell on them, 
these were so much mitigated by the patience 
they were taught, and the inward assistances 
with which they were furnished, that even 
those crosses were converted to blessings. 

I desired he would lay all these things to- 
gether, and see what he could except to 
them^, to make him think this was a contri- 
vance. Interest appears in all human con- 
trivances ; our Saviour plainly had none; he 
avoided applause, withdrew himself from the 
offers of a crown ; he submitted to poverty 
and reproach, and much contradiction in his 
life, and to a most ignominious and painful 
death. His apostles had none either ; they 
did not pretend either to power or wealth ; 
but delivered a doctrine that must needs 
condemn them, if they ever made such use of 
it ; they declared their commission fully 
without reserves till other times ; they re- 
corded their own weakness ; some of them 
wrought with their own hands ; and, when 
they received the charities of their converts, 
it was not so much to supply their own ne- 



JOHN EARL OF IIOCIIESTER. 243 

cessities as to distribute to others ; they 
knew they were to suffer much for giving 
their testimonies to v/hat they had seen and 
heard ; in which so many, in a thing so 
visible as Christ's resurrection and ascension, 
and the effusion of the Holy Ghost which he 
had promised^ could not be deceived : and 
they gave such public confirmations of it, by 
the wonders they themselves wrought, that 
great multitudes were converted to a doc- 
trine, which, besides the opposition it gave to 
lust and passion, was borne down and per- 
secuted for three hundred years ; and yet its 
force was such, that it not only weathered out 
all those storms, but even grew and spread 
vastly under them, Pliny, about threescore 
years after, found their numbers great, and 
their lives innocent : and even Lucian, 
amidst all his raillery, gives a high testimony 
to their charity and contempt of life, and the 
other virtues of the Christians ; which is 
likewise more than once done by malice 
itself, Julian the apostate. 

If a man will lay all this in one balance, 
and compare with it the few exceptions 
brought to it, he will soon find how strong 
the one, and how slight the other are. There- 
fore it was an improper way^ to begin at some 
cavils about some passages in the New 



2M THE LIFE OF 

Testament, or the Old, and from thence to 
prepossess one's mind against the whole. 
The right method had been first to consider 
the whole matter, and from so general a view 
to descend to more particular inquiries : 
whereas they suffered their minds to be fore- 
stalled with prejudices ; so that they never 
examined the matter impartially. 

To the greatest part of this he seemed to 
assent, only he excepted to the belief of mys- 
teries in the Christian religion ; which he 
thought no man could do, since it is not in a 
man's power to believe that which he cannot 
comprehend, and of which he can have no 
notion. The believing mysteries, he said, made 
way for all the jugglings of priests ; for they 
getting the people under them in that point, 
set out to them what they pleased; and, giv- 
ing it a hard name, and calling it a mystery, 
the people were tamed, and easily believed it. 
The restraining a man from the use of women, 
except one in the way of marriage, and deny- 
ing the remedy of divorce, he thought unrea- 
sonable impositions on the freedom of man- 
kind : and the business of the clergy, and their 
maintenance, with the belief of some autho- 
rity and power conveyed in their orders, looked, 
as he thought, like a piece of contrivance ; 
and why, said he, must a man tell me, T can- 



.70HN EARL OF UOCHESTEH. 245 

not be saved, unless I believe in things against 
my reason, and then that T must pay him for 
telling me of them ? These were all the excep- 
tions which at any time I heard from him to 
Christianity ; to which I made these answers. 
For mysteries, it is plain there is in every 
thing somewhat that is unaccountable. How 
animals or men are formed in their mothers' 
bellies, how seeds grow in the eaith, how the 
soul dwells in the body, and acts and moves 
it ; how we retain the figures of so many w6rds 
or things in our memories, and how we draw 
them out so easily and orderly in our thoughts 
or discourses ; how sight and hearing were so 
quick and distinct, how we move, and how 
bodies were compounded and united ; these 
things, if v/e follow them into all the difficul- 
ties that we may raise about them, will appear 
every whit as unaccountable as any mystery 
of religion : and a blind or deaf man would 
judge sight or hearing as incredible as any 
mystery may be judged by us ; for our reason 
is not equal to them. In the same rank, 
different degrees of age or capacity raise some 
far above others, so that children cannot fa- 
thom the learning, nor weak persons the 
counsels of more illuminated minds ; there- 
fore it was no wonder if we could not under- 
stand the Divine Essence. We cannot ima- 



246 THE LIFE OE 

gine how two such ditFerent natures as a soul 
and a body should so unite together, and be 
mutually affected with one another's concerns; 
and how the soul has one principle of reason, 
by which it acts intellectually, and another of 
life, by which it joins to the body and acts 
vitally : two principles so widely differing 
both in their nature and operation, and yet 
united in one and the same person. There 
might be as many hard arguments brought 
against the possibility of these things, which 
yet every one knows to be true, from specula- 
tive notions, as against the mysteries men- 
tioned in the scriptures. As that of the 
Trinity, that in one essence there are three 
different principles of operation, which, for 
want of terms fit to express them by, we call 
persons, and are called in scripture the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost ; and that the second 
of these did unite himself in a most intimate 
manner with the human nature of Jesus 
Christ ; and that the sufferings he underwent 
were accepted of God as a sacrifice for our 
sins ; who thereupon conferred on him a power 
of granting eternal life to all that submit to 
the terms on which he offers it ; and that the 
matter of which our bodies once consisted, 
which may as justly be called the bodies we 
laid down at our deaths as these can be said 



JOHN KARL OF llOCHESTEK. 247 

to be the bodies which we formerly lived in, 
being re6ned and made more spiritual, . shall 
be re-united to our souls, and become a fit 
instrument for them in a more perfect estate ; 
and that God inwardly bends and moves our 
wills by such impressions as he can make on 
our bodies and minds. 

These, which are the chief mysteries of our 
religion, are neither so unreasonable, that any 
other objection lies against them but this, that 
they agree not with our common notions, nor 
so unaccountable, that somewhat like them 
cannot be assigned in other things, which are 
believed really to be, though the manner of 
them cannot be apprehended : so this ought 
not to be any just objection to the submission 
of our reason to what we cannot so well con- 
ceive, provided our belief of it be ^vell ground- 
ed. There have been too many niceties 
brought indeed rather to darken than explain 
these : they have been defended by weak ar- 
guments, and illustrated by similes not always 
so very apt and pertinent ; and new subtilties 
have been added, which have rather perplexed 
than cleared them. All this cannot be de- 
nied ; the opposition of heretics anciently 
occasioned too much curiosity among the fa- 
thers, which the schoolmen have wonderfully 
advanced of late times. But if mysteries 



248 THE LIFE OF 

were received rather in the simplicity in which 
they are delivered in the scriptures than ac- 
cording to the descantings of fanciful men 
upon them, they would not appear much 
more incredible than some of the common 
objects of sense and perception. And it is a 
needless fear, that, if some mysteries are ac- 
knowledgedj which are plainly mentioned in 
the New Testament, it will then be in the 
power of the priests to add more at their plea- 
sure. For it is an absurd inference from our 
being bound to assent to some truths about 
the Divine Essence, of which the manner is 
not understood, to argue that therefore in an 
object, presented duly to our senses, such as 
bread and wine, we should be bound to be- 
lieve, against their testimony, that it is not 
what our senses perceived it to be, but the 
whole flesh and blood of Christ, an entire 
body being in every crumb and drop of it. It 
is not, indeed, in a man's power to believe 
thus against his sense and reason, where the 
object is proportioned to them, and fitly ap- 
plied, and the organs are under no indisposi- 
tion or disorder. It is certain that no mystery 
is to be admitted but upon very clear and ex- 
press authorities from scripture, which could 
not reasonably be understood in any other 
sense. And, though a man cannot form an 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 249 

explicit notion of a mystery, for then it would 
be no longer a mystery, yet, in general, he 
may believe a thing to be, though he cannot 
give himself a particular account of the way 
of it ; or, rather, though he cannot answer 
some objections which lie against it. We 
know we believe many such in human matters^ 
which are more within our reach ; and it is 
very unreasonable to say we may not do it in 
divine things, which are much more above our 
apprehensions. 

For the severe restraint of the use of wo- 
men, it is hard to deny that privilege to Jesus 
Christ, as a lawgiver, to lay such restraints 
as all inferior legislators do ; who, when 
they find the liberties their subjects take 
prove hurtful to them, set such limits, and 
make such regulations, as they judge neces- 
sary and expedient. It cannot be said, but 
the restraint of appetite is necessary in some 
instances ; and, if it is necessary in these, 
perhaps other restraints are no less necessary 
to fortify and secure them : for, if it be ac- 
knowledged that men have a property in 
their wives and daughters^ so that to defile 
the one, or corrupt the other, is an unjust 
and injurious thing, it is certain that, except 
a man carefully governs his appetites^ he will 
break through these restraints ; and therefore 



250 THE LIFE OF 

our Saviour, knowing that nothing could so 
effectually deliver the world from the mis- 
chief of unrestrained appetite as such a con- 
fin ement, might very reasonably enjoin it. 
And, in all such cases, we are to balance the 
inconveniences on both hands ; and, v/here 
we find they are heaviest, we are to acknow- 
ledge the equity of the law. On the one 
hand there is no prejudice, but the restraint 
of appetite ; on the other are the mischiefs of 
being given up to pleasure, of running inordi- 
nately into it, of breaking the quiet of our 
own family at home and of others abroad, 
the engaging into much passion, the do- 
ing many false and impious things to com- 
pass what is desired, the waste of men's 
estates, time, and health. Now, let any man 
judge whether the prejudices on this side are 
not greater than that single one on the other 
side, of being denied some pleasure. For po- 
lygamy, it is but reasonable, since women 
are equally concerned in the laws of mar- 
riage, that they should be considered as well 
as men; but, in a state of polygamy, they 
are under great misery and jealousy, and are 
indeed barbarously used. Man being also of 
a sociable nature, friendship and converse 
were among the primitive intendments of 
marriage; in which, as far as the man may 



JOHN KAKL OF ROCHESTER. 251 

excel the wife in greatness of mind and 
height of knowledge, the wife some way 
makes that up with her affection and tender 
care ; so that from both happily mixed there 
arises a harmony, which is, to virtuous minds, 
one of the greatest joys of life : but all this 
is gone in a state of polygamy, which occa- 
sions perpetual jarrings and jealousies. And 
the variety does but engage men to a freer 
range of pleasure ; which is not to be put in 
the balance with the far greater mischiefs 
that must follow the other course. So that 
it is plain our Saviour considered the nature 
of man, what it could bear, and what was fit 
for it, when he so restrained us in these our 
liberties. And for divorce, a pov/er to break 
that bond would too much encourage mar- 
ried persons in the little quarrellings that 
may arise between them, if it w^ere in their 
power to depart one from another : for, when 
they know that cannot be, and that they 
must live and die together, it does naturally 
incline them to lay down their resentments, 
and to endeavour to live together as well as 
they can. So, the law of the Gospel being a 
law of love, designed to engage Christians to 
mutual love, it was fit that all such provi- 
sions should be made as might advance and 
maintain it, and all such liberties be taken 



252 THE LIFE OF 

away as are apt to enkindle or foment strife. 
This might fall in some instances to be un- 
easy and hard enough ; but laws consider 
what falls out most commonly, and cannot 
provide for all particular cases. The best 
laws are, in some instances, very great grie- 
vances ; but, the advantages being balanced 
with the inconveniences, measures are to be 
taken accordingly. Upon this w^hole matter 
I said, that pleasure stood in opposition to 
other considerations of great weight, and so 
the decision was easy : and, since our Saviour 
offers us so great rewards, it is but reasonable 
he have the privilege of loading these pro- 
nii'ses with such conditions as are not in 
themselves grateful to our natural inclina- 
tions ; for all that propose high rewards have 
thereby a right to exact difficult perform- 
ances. 

To this he said, we are sure the terms are 
difficult, but are not so sure of the rewards. 
Upon this I told him, that we have the same 
assurance of the rewards that we have of the 
other parts of the Christian religion. We 
have the promises of God, made to us by 
Christ, confirmed, by many miracles; we have 
the earnests of these, in the quiet and peace 
which follow a good conscience, and in the 
resurrection of him from the dead who hath 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER, 253 

promised to raise us up. So that the reward 
is sufficiently assured to us ; and there is no 
reason it should be given to us before the 
conditions are performed on which the pro- 
mises are made. It is but reasonable that 
we should trust God, and do our duty, in 
hopes of that eternal life which God, who 
cannot lie, hath promised. The difficulties 
are not so great as those which sometimes 
the commonest concerns of life bring upon 
us : the learning some trades or sciences, the 
governing our health and affairs, bring us 
often under as great straits : so that it ought 
to be no just prejudice that there are some 
things in religion that are uneasy, since this 
is rather the effect of our corrupt natures, 
which are farther depraved by vicious habits, 
and can hardly turn to any new course of 
life without some pain, than of the dictates 
of Christianity, which are in themselves just 
and reasonable, and will be easy to us when 
renewed and in a good measure restored to 
our primitive integrity. 

As for the exceptions he had to the main- 
tenance of the clergy, and the authority to 
which they pretended, if they stretched their 
designs too far, the Gospel did plainly re- 
prove them for it ; so that it wdiS very suit- 
able to that church, which was so grossly 
z 



254 THE LIFE OF 

faulty this way, to take the scriptures out of 
the hands of the people, since they do so 
manifestly disclaim all such practices. The 
priests of the true Christian religion have no 
secrets among them which the world must 
not know ; but are only an order of men, de- 
dicated to God, to attend on sacred things, 
who ought to be holy in a more peculiar 
manner, since they are to handle the things 
of God. It was necessary that such persons 
should have a due esteem paid them, and a 
fit maintenance appointed for them, that so 
they might be preserved from the contempt 
that follows poverty, and the distractions 
which the providing against it might other- 
wise involve them in. And as, in the order 
of the world, it was necessary, for the sup- 
port of magistracy and government, and for 
preserving its esteem, that some state be 
used, though it is a happiness when great 
men have philosophical minds to despise the 
pageantry of it : so the plentiful supply of 
the clergy if well used and applied by them, 
will certainly turn to the advantage of reli- 
gion. And, if some men, either through am- 
bition or covetousness, used indirect means, 
or servile compliances, to aspire to such 
dignities, and, being possessed of them, ap- 
plied their wealth either to luxury or vain 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 255 

pomp, or made great fortunes out of it for 
their families, these were personal failings, 
in which the doctrine of Christ was not con- 
cerned. 

He upon that told me plainly, there was 
nothing that gave him, and many others, a 
more secret encouragement in their ill ways, 
than that those, who pretended to believe, 
lived so that they could not be thought to be 
in earnest when they said it : for he was sure 
religion was a mere contrivance, or the most 
important thing that could be ; so that, if he 
once believed, he would set himself in great 
earnest to live suitably to it. The aspirings 
that he had observed at court of some of the 
clergy, with the servile ways they took to at- 
tain to preferment, and the animosities among 
those of several parties about trifles, made 
him often think they suspected the things 
were not true, which in their sermons and 
discourses they so earnestly recommended. 
Of this he had gathered many instances : I 
knew some of them were mistakes and ca- 
lumnies ; yet I could not deny but something 
of them might be too true : and I publish this 
the more freely, to put all that pretend to re- 
ligion, chiefly those that are dedicated to holy 
functions, in mind of the great obligation 
that lies on them to live suitably to their pro- 



^50 THE LIFE OF 

fession ; since otherwise a great deal of the 
irreligion and atheism, that is among us, may 
too justly be charged on them : for wicked 
men are delighted out of measure when they 
discover ill things in them, and conclude^ 
from thence, not only that they are hypo- 
crites, but that religion itself is a cheat. 

But I said to him upon this head, that, 
though no good man could continue in the 
practice of any known sin, yet such might, by 
the violence or surprise of a temptation, to 
which they are liable as much as others, be 
on a sudden overcome to do an* ill thing, to 
their great grief all their life after ; and then 
it was a very unjust inference, upon some few 
failings, to conclude that such men do not 
believe themselves. But, how bad soever 
many are, it cannot be denied but there are 
also many^ both of the clergy and laity, who 
give great and real demonstrations of the 
power religion has over them, in their con- 
tempt of the world, the strictness of their 
lives, their readiness to forgive injuries, to 
relieve the poor, and to do good on all occa- 
sions ; and yet even these may have their 
failings, either in such things in which their 
constitutions are weak, or their temptations 
strong and sudden ; and in all such cases 
we are to judge of men rather by the course 



JOHN EAllL OF ROCHESTER. 257 

of their lives than by the errors that they, 
through infirmity or surprise, may have slip- 
ped into. 

These were the chief heads we discoursed 
on ; and, as far as I can remember, 1 have 
faithfully repeated the substance of our argu- 
ments. I have not concealed the strongest 
things he said to me ; but, though I have not 
enlarged on all the excursions of his wit in 
setting them off, yet I have given them their 
full strength, as he expressed them, and, ag 
far as I could recollect, have used his own 
words ; so that I am afraid some may censure 
me for setting down these things so largely, 
which impious men may make an ill use of, 
and gather together to encourage and defend 
themselves in their vices : but, if they will 
compare them with the answers made to 
them, and the sense that so great and refined 
a wit had of them afterwards, I hope they 
may, through the blessing of God, be not al- 
together inefiPectual. 

The issue of all our discourse was this ; he 
told me, he saw vice and impiety were as con- 
trary to human society as wild beasts let loose 
would be ; and therefore he firmly resolved to 
change the whole method of his life, to be- 
come strictly just and true, to be chaste and 
temperate, to forbear swearing and irreligious 
z3 



25S THE LIFE OF 

discourse, to worship and pray to his Maker ; 
and that, though he was not arrived at a full 
persuasion of Christianity, he would never em- 
ploy his wit more to run it down, or to corrupt 
others. Of which I have since a farther assur- 
ance from a person of quality who conversed 
much with him the last year of his life ; to 
whom he would often say, that he was happy 
if he did believe, and that he would never en- 
deavour to draw him from it. 

To all this I answered, that a virtuous life 
would be very uneasy to him unless vicious 
inclinations were removed : it would otherwise 
be a perpetual constraint. Nor could it 
be effected without an inward principle to 
change him ; and that was only to be had by 
applying himself to God for it in frequent and 
earnest prayer : and, I was sure, if his mind 
were once cleared of these disorders, and 
cured of those distempers, which vice brought 
on it; so great an understanding would soon 
see through all those flights of wit that do 
feed atheism and irreligion, which have a 
false glittering in them, that dazzles some 
weak-sighted minds, who have not capacity 
enough to penetrate farther than the surfaces 
of things ; and so they stick in these toils, 
which the strength of his mind would soon 



JOHN EAllL OF KOCHESTER. 259 

break through, if it were once freed from 
those things that depressed and darkened it. 

At this pass he was when he went from 
London about the beginning of April : he 
had not been long in the country, when he 
thought he was so well, that, being to go to 
his estate in Somersetshire, he rode thither 
post. This heat and violent motion did so 
inflame an ulcer with which he was afflicted, 
that he with much difficulty came back by 
coach to the lodge at Woodstock- park. He 
was then wounded both in body and mind ; 
he understood physic and his own constitu- 
tion and distemper so well^ that he concluded 
he could hardly recover. But now the hand 
of God touched him, and, as he told me, it 
was not only a general dark melancholy over 
his mind, such as he had formerly felt, but a 
most penetrating cutting sorrow : so that, 
though in his body he suffered extreme pain 
for some weeks, yet the agonies of his mind 
sometimes swallowed up the sense of what he 
felt in his body. He told me, and gave it me 
in charge to tell it to one for whom he was 
much concerned, that, though there were 
nothing to come after this life, yet all the 
pleasures he had ever known in sin were not 
worth that torture he had felt in his mind. 



260 THE LIFE OF 

He considered he had not only neglected and 
dishonoured, but had openly defied his Maker, 
and had drawn many others into the like im- 
pieties ; so that he looked on himself as one 
that was in great danger of being damned. He 
then set himself wholly to turn to God un- 
feignedly, and to do all that was possible, in 
that little remainder of his life which was be- 
fore him, to redeem those great portions of it 
that he had formerly so ill employed. The 
minister, that attended constantly on him, 
was that good and worthy man, Mr. Parsons, 
his mother's chaplain, who hath since his 
death preached, according to the directions 
he received from him, his funeral sermon; in 
which there are so many remarkable passages, 
that 1 shall refer my reader to them, and will 
repeat none of them here, that I may not 
thereby lessen his desire to edify himself by 
that excellent discourse, which hath given so 
great and so general a satisfaction to all good 
and judicious readers. I shall speak cur- 
sorily of every thing, but that which I had 
immediately from himself. He was visited 
every week of his sickness by his diocesan, 
that truly primitive prelate, the Lord Bishop 
of Oxford ; who, though he lived six miles 
from him, yet looked on this as so important 
a piece of his pastoral care, that he went 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 261 

often to him, and treated him with that de- 
cent plainness and freedom which is so natural 
to him ; and took care also that he might 
not, on terms more easy than safe, be at 
peace with himself. Dr. Marshall, the learn- 
ed and worthy rector of Lincoln College in 
Oxford, being the minister of the parish^ was 
also frequently with him ; and by these helps 
he was so directed and supported, that he 
might not on the one hand satisfy himself 
with too superficial a repentance, nor on the 
other hand be out of measure oppressed with 
a sorrow without hope. As soon as I heard 
he was ill,^^but yet in such a condition that I 
might write to him, I wrote a letter to the 
best purpose I could. He ordered one that 
was then with him, to assure me it was very 
welcome to him ; but, not satisfied with that, 
he sent me an answer, of which, as the 
Countess of Rochester, his mother, told me, 
he dictated every word, and then signed it. 
I was once unwilling to have published it, 
because of a compliment in it to myself, far 
above my merit, and not very well suiting 
with his condition. 

But the sense he expresses in it, of the 
change then wrought on him^ hath upon se- 
cond thoughts prevailed with me to publish 
it, leaving out what concerns myself. 



262 THE LIFE OF 

^* Woodstock-Park, Oxfordshire. 
*^ My most honoured Dr. Burnet, 
'^ My spirits and body decay so equally 
together, that I shall write you a letter, as 
weak as I am, in person. I begin to value 
churchmen above all men in the world, &c. 
If God be yet pleased to spare me longer in 
this world, I hope in your conversation to be 
exalted to that degree of piety, that the world 
may see how much I abhor what I so long 
lovedj and how much I glory in repentance 
and in God's service. Bestow your prayers 
upon me, that God would spare me, if it be 
his good will, to show a true repentance and 
amendment of life for the time to come : or 
else, if the Lord pleaseth to put an end to my 
worldly being now, that he would mercifully 
accept of my death-bed repentance, and per- 
form that promise that he hath been pleased 
to make, that, at what time soever a sinner 
doth repent, he would receive him. Put up 
these prayers, most dear doctor, to Almighty 
God, for 

" Your most obedient, and 

^^ languishing servant, 
^* June 25, 1680. " Rochester." 

He told me, when I saw him, that he hoped 
I would come to him upon that general insi- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 263 

nuation of the desire he had of my company ; 
and he was loth to write more plainly, not 
knowing whether I could easily spare so much 
time. T told him, that, on the other hand, I 
looked on it as a presumption to come so far 
when he was in such excellent hands ; and, 
though perhaps the freedom formerly between 
us might have excused it with those to whom 
it was known, yet it might have the appear- 
ance of so much vanity to such as were 
strangers to it ; so that, till I received his 
letter, I did not think it convenient to come 
to him ; and then, not hearing that there 
was any danger of a sudden change, I de- 
layed going to him till the twentieth of July. 
At my coming to his house, an accident fell 
out not worth mentioning but that some have 
made a story of it. His servant, being a 
Frenchman, carried up my name wrong, so 
that he mistook it for another who had sent 
to him that he would undertake his cure, and 
he, being resolved not to meddle with him, 
did not care to see him : this mistake lasted 
some hours, with which I was the better con- 
tented, because he was not then in such a 
condition that my being about him could have 
been of any use to him ; for that night was 
like to have been his last. He had a convul- 
sion-fit, and raved ; but, opiates being given 



264} THE LIFE OF 

him^ after some hours' rest, his raving left hini 
so entirely, that it never again returned to 
him. 

I cannot easily express the transport he was 
in when he awoke and saw me by him ; he 
broke out in the tenderest expressions con- 
cerning my kindness in coming so far to see 
such an one, using terms of great abhorrence 
concerning himself, which I forbear to relate. 
He told me, as his strength served him at 
several snatches, for he was then so low that 
he could not hold up discourse long at once, 
what sense he had of his past life ; what sad 
apprehension for having so offended his Maker 
and dishonoured his Redeemer ; what horrors 
he had gone through, and how much his mind 
was turned to call on God and on his crucified 
Saviour, so that he hoped he should obtain 
mercy ; for he believed he had sincerely re- 
pented, and had now a calm in his mind after 
that storm that he had been in for some weeks. 
He had strong apprehensions and persuasions 
of his admittance to Heaven, of which he 
spake once, not without some extraordinary 
emotion. It was, indeed, the only time that he 
spake with any great warmth to me ; for his 
spirits were then low, and so far spent, that 
though those about him told me he had ex- 
pressed formerly great fervour in his devotions, 



JOHN EARL OF KOCHESTER. 265 

yet, nature was so much sunk, that these 
were in a great measure fallen off. But he 
made me pray often with him, and spake of 
his conversion to God as a thing now grown 
up in him to a settled and calm serenity. He 
was very anxious to know my opinion of a 
death-bed repentance. I told him, that, be- 
fore I gave any resolution in that, it would be 
convenient that I should be acquainted more 
particularly with the circumstances and pro- 
gress of his repentance. 

Upon this, he satisfied me in many parti- 
culars. He said he was now persuaded both 
of the truth of Christianity and of the power 
of inward grace, of which he gave me this 
strange account. He said, Mr. Parsons, in 
order to his conviction, read to him the fifty- 
third chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, and 
compared that with the history of our Saviour's 
passion, that he might there see a prophecy 
concerning it, written many ages before it was 
done ; which the Jews, that blasphemed Jesus 
Christ, still kept in their hands as a book 
divinely inspired. He said to me, that, as he 
heard it read, he felt an inward force upon 
him, which did so enlighten his mind and 
convince him, that he could resist it no longer ; 
for the words had an authority which did shoot 
like rays or beams in his mind ; so that he 
2 a 



266 THE LIFE OF 

was not only convinced by the reasonings he 
had about it, which satisfied his understanding, 
but by a power which did so effectually con- 
strain him, that he did ever after as firmly be- 
lieve in his Saviour as if he had seen him in 
the clouds. He had made it be read so often 
to him, that he had got it by heart, and went 
through a great part of it, in discourse with me, 
with a sort of heavenly pleasure, giving me his 
reflections on it. Some few 1 remember. IV/io 
hath believed our report? (verse 1.) Here, he 
said, was foretold the opposition the Gospel 
was to meet with from such wretches as he 
was. He hath no form nor comeliness^ and 
when we shall see him there is no beauty that 
we should desire him. (verse 2.) On this, he 
said, the meanness of his appearance and 
person has made vain and foolish people dis- 
parage him, because he came not in such a 
fool's coat as they delight in. What he said 
on the other parts I do not well remember ; 
and indeed I was so affected with what he 
said then to me, that the general transport I 
was under during the whole discourse made 
me less capable to remember these particulars 
as I wish I had done. 

He told me, that he had thereupon received 
the sacrament with great satisfaction ; and 
that was increased by the pleasure he had in 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 267 

his lady's receiving it with him, who had 
been for some years misled into the commu- 
nion of the church of Rome, and he himself 
had been not a little instrumental in procur- 
ing it, as he freely acknowledged : so that it 
was one of the joy fullest things that befel 
him in his sickness, that he had seen that 
mischief removed in which he had so great a 
hand : and, during his whole sickness, he 
expressed so much tenderness and true kind- 
ness to his lady, that, as it easily defaced the 
remembrance of every thing wherein he had 
been in fault formerly, so it drew from her 
the most passionate care and concern for him 
that was possible ; which indeed deserves a 
higher character than is decent to give of a 
person yet alive. But I shall confine my dis- 
course to the dead. 

He told me, he had overcome all his re- 
sentments to all the world, so that he bore 
ill-will to no person, nor hated any upon per- 
sonal accounts. He had given a true state 
of his debts, and had ordered to pay them 
all, as far as his estate, that was not settled, 
could go ; and was confident, that if all that 
was owing to him were paid to his executors, 
his creditors would be all satisfied. He said, 
he found his mind now possessed with ano- 
ther sense of things than ever he had for- 



268 THE LIFE OF 

merly. He did not repine under all his pain ; 
and, in one of the sharpest fits he was under 
while I was with him, he said, he did willing- 
ly submit ; and, looking up to heaven, said, 
*•' God's holy will be done; I bless him for 
all he does to me." He professed, he was 
contented either to die or live, as should 
please God ; and, though it. was a foolish 
thing for a man to pretend to choose whether 
he would die or live, yet he wished rather to 
die. He knew he could never be so well 
that life should be comfortable to him. He 
was confident he should be happy if he died ; 
but he feared, if he lived, he might relapse ; 
" and then,'' said he to me, " in what a condi- 
tion shall I be if I relapse after all this !" 
But, he said, he trusted in the grace and 
goodness of God, and was resolved to avoid 
all those temptations, that course of life and 
company, that were likely to ensnare him ; 
and he desired to live on no other account, 
but that he might, by the change of his man- 
ners, some way take off the high scandal his 
former behaviour had given. All these 
things, at several times, I had from him, be- 
sides some messages, which very well became 
a dying penitent, to some of his former 
friends, and a charge to publish any thing 
concernins: him that might be a means to re- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 269 

claim others ; praying God, that as his life 
had done much hurt, so his death might do 
some good. 

Having understood all these things from 
him, and being pressed to give him my opi- 
nion plainly about his eternal state, 1 told 
him, that though the promises of the Gos- 
pel did all depend upon a real change of 
heart and life, as the indispensable condition 
upon which they were made ; and that it was 
scarce possible to know certainly whether our 
hearts are changed, unless it appeared in our 
lives ; and, the repentance of most dying men 
being like the bowlings of condemned prison- 
ers for pardon, which flowed from no sense 
of their crimes, but from the horror of ap- 
proaching death, there was little reason to 
encourage any to hope much from such sor- 
rowing ; yet, certainly, if the mind of a sin- 
ner, even on a death-bed, be truly renewed 
and turned to God, so great is his mercy, 
that he will receive him even in that extre- 
mity. He said, he was sure his mind was 
entirely turned ; and, though horror had 
given him his first awaking, yet that was now 
grown up into a settled faith and conversion. 

There is but one prejudice lies against all 
this, to defeat the good ends of divine provi- 
dence by it upon others as well as on him- 
2 A 3 



270 THE LIFE OF 

self; and that is, that it was a part of his 
disease, and that the lowness of his spirits 
made such an alteration in him, that he was 
not what he had formerly been ; and this 
some have carried so far as to say that he 
died mad. These reports are raised by those 
who are unwilling that the last thoughts or 
words of a person every way so extraordi- 
nary should have any effect either on them- 
selves or others ; and it is to be feared, that 
some may have so far seared their conscien- 
ces, and exceeded the common measures of 
sin and infidelity^ that neither this testimony, 
nor one coming from the dead, would signify 
much towards their conviction. That this 
lord was either mad or stupid is a thing so 
notoriously untrue, that it is the greatest im- 
pudence for any that were about him to re- 
port it, and a very unreasonable credulity in 
others to believe it. All the while I was 
with him, after he had slept out the disorders 
of the fit he was in the first night, he was not 
only without ravings, but had a clearness in 
his thoughts, in his memory, in his reflections 
on things and persons, far beyond what I 
ever saw in a person so low in his strength. 
He was not able to hold out long in dis- 
course, for his spirits failed ; but once for 
half an hour, and often for a quarter of an 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 271 

hour, after he awoke, he had a vivacity in 
his discourse that was extraordinary, and in 
all things like himself. He called often for 
his children, his son (afterwards Earl of Ro- 
chester), and his three daughters, and spake 
to them with a sense and feeling that cannot 
be expressed in writing. He called me once 
to look on them all, and said, " See how 
good God has been to me, in giving me so 
many blessings, and I have carried myself to 
him like an ungracious and unthankful dog." 
He once talked a great deal to me of public 
affairs, and of many persons and things, with 
the same clearness of thought and expres- 
sion that he had ever done before : so that 
by no sign but his weakness of body, and 
giving over discourse so soon, could I per- 
ceive a difference between what his parts for- 
merly were and what they were then. 

And that wherein the presence of his mind 
appeared most, was in the total change of an 
ill habit grown so much upon him, that he 
could hardly govern himself, when he was 
any ways heated, three minutes without fall- 
ing into it : I mean swearing. He had ac- 
knowledged to me the former winter, that he 
abhorred it as a base and indecent thing, and 
had set himself much to break it off; but he 
confessed, that he was so overpowered by that 



272 THE LIFE OF 

ill custom, that he could not speak with any 
warmth without repeated oaths, which, upon 
any sort of provocation, came almost naturally 
from him ; but, in his last remorses, this did 
so sensibly affect him, that, by a resolute and 
constant watchfulness, the habit of it was per- 
fectly mastered ; so that, upon the returns of 
pain, which were very severe and frequent 
upon him the last day I was with him, or 
upon such displeasures as people sick or in 
pain are apt to take on a sudden at those 
about them— on all those occasions he never 
swore an oath all the while I was there. 

Once he was offended with the delay of one 
he thought made not haste enough with some- 
what he called for, and said, in a little heat, 
^* that damned fellow :" soon after I told him, 
I was glad to find his style so reformed, and 
that he had so entirely overcome that ill habit 
of swearing ; only that word of calling any 
damned, which had returned upon him, was 
not decent. His answer was : ** Oh ! that lan- 
guage of fiends, which was so familiar to mC;, 
hangs yet about me: sure none has deserved 
more to be damned than I have done/' And, 
after he had humbly asked God pardon for it, 
he desired me to call the person to him, that 
he might ask him forgiveness : but I told him 
that was needless ; for he had said it of one 



JOHN EARL OF KOCHESTER. 27 ^ 

that did not hear it, and so could not be of- 
fended by it. 

In this disposition of mind did he continue 
ail the while I was with him^ four days to- 
gether : he was then brought so low, that all 
hopes of recovery were gone. He experienced 
much pain at intervals, and one day suffered 
inexpressible torment ; yet he bore it decently, 
without breaking out into repinings or impa- 
tient complaints. The whole substance of his 
body was wasted^ and nothing was left but 
skin and bone ; and by lying much on his 
back, the parts there began to mortify : but 
he had been formerly so low, that he seemed 
as much past all hopes of life as now : which 
made him one morning, after a full and sweet 
night's rest, procured by laudanum given him 
without his knowledge, to fancy it was an effort 
of nature, and to begin to entertain some 
hopes of recovery : for he said he felt himself 
perfectly well, and that he had nothing ailing 
him but an extreme weakness, which might 
go off in time ; and then he entertained me with 
the scheme he had laid down for the rest of his 
life ; how retired, how strict, and how studious, 
he intended to be : but this was soon over ; 
for he quickly felt that it was only the effect 
of a good sleep, and that he was still in a 
very desperate state. 



274 THE LIFE OF 

I thought to have left him on Friday ; but, 
not without some passion, he desired me to 
stay that day. There appeared no symptom 
of present death ; and a worthy physician 
then with him told me, that though he was so 
low that an accident might carry him away on 
a sudden, yet, without that, he thought he 
might live yet some weeks. So, on Saturday, 
at four o'clock in the morning, I left him, 
being the 24th of July. But I durst not take 
leave of him; for he had expressed so great 
an unwillingness to part with me the day be- 
fore, that if I had not presently yielded to one 
day's stay, it was like to have given him some 
trouble, therefore I thought it better to leave 
him without any formality. Some hours 
after he asked for me ; and when it was told 
him I was gone, he seemed to be troubled, and 
said, " Has my friend left me ? then I shall 
die shortly," After that, he spake but once 
or twice till he died : he lay much silent : 
once they heard him praying very devoutly. 
And on Monday, about two o'clock in the 
morning, he died, without any convulsion, 
or so much as a groan. 

Thus he lived, and thus he died in the 
three and thirtieth year of his age. Nature 
had fitted him for great things, and his know- 
ledge and observation qualified him to have 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTKR. 275 

been one of the most extraordinary men, not 
only of his nation, but of the age he lived in ; 
and I do verily believe, that if God had thought 
fit to have continued him longer in the world, 
he had been the wonder and delight of all 
that knew him : but the infinite wise God 
knew better what was fit for him, and what 
the age deserved : for men, who have so cast 
off all sense of God and religion, deserve not 
so signal a blessing as the example and con- 
viction which the rest of his life might have 
given them : and 1 am apt to think that the Di- 
vine Goodness took pity on him ; and, seeing 
the sincerity of his repentance, would try and 
venture him no more in circumstances of 
temptation, perhaps too hard for human frail- 
ty. Now he is at rest ; and, I am very con- 
fident, enjoys the fruits of his late, but sin- 
cere, repentance. But such as live, and still 
go on in their sins and impieties, and will not 
be awakened, either by this or the other 
alarms that are about their ears, are, it seems, 
given up by God to a judicial hardness and 
impenitency. , 

Here is a public instance of one who lived 
of their side, but could not die of it ; and 
though none of all our libertines understood 
better than he the secret mysteries of sin, had 
more studied every thing that could support 



276 THE LIFE OF 

a man in it, and had more resisted all exter- 
nal means of conviction than he had done ; 
yet, when the hand of God inwardly touched 
him, he could no longer kick against those 
pricks, but humbled himself under that 
mighty hand : and, as he used often to say in 
his prayers, he who had so often denied him, 
found then no other shelter but his mercies 
and compassions. 

I have written this account with all the ten- 
derness and caution I could use, and in what- 
soever I may have failed, I have been strict 
in the truth of what I have related, remember- 
ing that of Job, " Will ye lie for God ?" Re- 
ligion has strength and evidence enough in 
itself, and needs no support from lies and 
made stories. 1 do not pretend to have given 
the formal words that he said, though I have 
done that where I could remember them. 
But I have written this with the same sin- 
cerity that I would have done had I known I 
had been to die immediately after I had 
finished it. I did not take notes of our dis- 
courses last winter after we parted ; so I may, 
pejrhaps, in the setting out of my answers to 
him, have enlarged on several things both 
more fully and more regularly, than I could 
say them in such free discourses as we had. 
I am not so sure of all I set down, as said by 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 277 

me, as I am of all said by him to me ; but yet 
the substance of the greatest part, even of 
that, is the same. 

It remains that I humbly and earnestly be- 
seech all that shall take this book in their 
hands, that they will consider it entirely, and 
not wrest some parts to an ill intention. God, 
the searcher of hearts, knows with what fide- 
lity I have written it ; but if any will drink up 
only the poison that may be in it, without 
taking also the antidote here given to those 
ill principles, or considering the sense that 
this great person had of them, when he re- 
flected seriously on them ; and will rather 
confirm themselves in their ill ways, by the 
scruples and objections which I set down, than 
be edified by the other parts of it ; as I shall 
look on it as a great infelicity that I should 
have said any thing that may strengthen them 
in their impieties, so the sincerity of my in- 
tentions will, I doubt not, excuse me at his 
hands, to whom I offer up this small service. 

I have now performed, in the best manner 
I could, what was left on me by this noble 
Lord, and have done with the part of an his- 
torian, I shall in the next place say some- 
what as a divine. So extraordinary a text 
does almost force a sermon, though it is plain 
enough itself, and speaks with so loud a voice, 

2 B 



278 THE LIFE OF 

that those who are not awakened by it will, 
perhaps, consider nothing that I can say. If 
our libertines will become so far sober as to 
examine their former coarse of life with that 
disengagement and impartiality which they 
must acknowledge a wise man ought to use in 
things of greatest consequence, and balance 
the account of what they have got by their 
debaucheries with the mischiefs they have 
brought on themselves and others by them, 
they will soon see what a mad bargain they 
have made. Some diversion, mirth, and plea- 
sure, is all they can promise themselves ; but, 
to obtain this, how many evils are they to 
suffer I How have many wasted their strength, 
brought many diseases on their bodies, and 
precipitated their age in the pursuit of those 
things ! And as they bring old age early on 
themselves, so it becomes a miserable state of 
life to the greatest part of them ; gouts, stran- 
guries, and other infirmities, being severe 
reckonings for their past follies ; not to men- 
tion the more loathsome diseases, with their 
no less loathsome and troublesome cures, 
which they must often go through who deliver 
themselves up to forbidden pleasures. Many 
are disfigured beside with the marks of their 
intemperance and lewdness : and, which is 
yet sadder^ an infection is derived ofttimes on 



JOHK EARL OF ROCHESTER. 279 

their innocent but unhappy issue, who, being 
descended from so vitiated an original, suffer 
for their excesses. Their fortunes are pro- 
fusely wasted, both by their neglect of their 
affairs, they being so buried in vice that they 
cannot employ either their time or spirits, so 
much exhausted by intemperance, to consider 
them ; and by that prodigal expense which 
their lusts put them upon. They suffer no 
less in their credit, the chief mean to recover 
an entangled estate ; for that irregular expense 
forces them to so many mean shifts, makes 
them so often false to all their promises and 
resolutions, that they must needs feel how 
much they have lost that, which a gentleman, 
and men of ingenuous tempers, do sometimes 
prefer even to life itself, their honour and re- 
putation. Nor do they suffer less in the nobler 
powers of their minds, which, by a long 
course of such dissolute practices, come to 
sink and degenerate so far, that not a few, 
whose first blossoms gave the most promising 
hopes, have so withered, as to become inca- 
pable of great and generous undertakings, and 
to be disabled to every thing, but to wallow 
like swine in the filth of sensuality, their spi- 
rits being dissipated, and their minds so be- 
numbed, as to be wholly unfit for business, 
and even indisposed to think. 



280 THE LIFE OF 

That this dear price should be paid for a 
little wild mirth, or gross and corporal plea- 
sure^ is a thing of such unparalleled folly, 
that if there were not too many such instances 
before us, it might seem incredible. To all 
this we must add the horrors that their ill 
actions raise in them, and the hard shifts they 
are put-to to stave off these, either by being 
perpetually drunk or mad, or by an habitual 
disuse of thinking and reflecting on their 
actions, and (if these arts will not perfectly 
quiet them) by taking sanctuary in such 
atheistical principles as may at least mitigate 
the sourness of their thoughts, though they 
cannot absolutely settle their minds. 

If the state of mankind and human socie- 
ties is considered, what mischiefs can be equal 
to those which follow these courses ? Such 
persons are a plague wherever they come ; they 
can neither be trusted nor be loved, having 
cast off' both truth and goodness, which pro- 
cure confidence and attract love ; they cor- 
rupt some by their ill practices, and do 
irreparable injuries to the rest; they run 
great hazards, and put themselves to much 
trouble, and all this to do what is in their 
power to make damnation as sure to them- 
selves as possibly they can. What influence 
this has on the whole nation is but too visible ; 



JOHN EAKL OF ROCHESTEK. 281 

how the bonds of nature, wedlock, and all 
other relations, are quite broken : virtue is 
thought an antique piece of formality, and 
religion the effect of cowardice or knavery ; 
these are the men that would reform the world; 
by bringing it under a new system of intel- 
lectual and moral principles ; but, bate them 
a few bold and lewd jests, what have they 
ever done, or designed to do, to make them 
be remembered, except it be with detestation ? - 
They are the scorn of the present age, and 
their names must rot in the next. Here they 
have before them an instance of one, who was 
deeply corrupted with the contagion which he 
first derived from others, but unhappily height- 
ened it much himself. He vras a master in- 
deed, and not a bare trifler with wit, as some of 
those are who repeat, and that but scurvily, 
what they may have heard from him or some 
others, and with impudence and laughter will 
face the world down^ as if they were to teach 
it wisdom ; who, God knows, cannot follow 
one thought a step farther than as they have 
conned it ; and take from them their borrowed 
\vit and mimical humour, and they will pre- 
sently appear, what they indeed are, the least 
and lowest of men. 

If they will, or if they can, think a little, I 
wish they would consider that, by their own 
2 B 3 



282 THE LIFE OF 

principles, they cannot be sure that religion 
is only a contrivance ; all they pretend ^^ is 
only to weaken some arguments that are 
brought for it; but they have not brow enough 
to say they can prove that their own princi- 
ples are true ; so that, at most, they bring 
their cause no higher than that it is possible 
religion may not be true. But still it is possible 
it may be true, and they have no shame left 
that will deny that it is also probable it may 
be true ; and if so, then what madmen are 
they who run so great a hazard for nothing 1 
By their own confession, it may be there is a 
God, a judgement, and a life to come ; and if 
so, then he that believes these things^ and 
lives according to them, as he enjoys a long 
course of health and quiet of mind, an inno- 
cent relish of many true pleasures, and the 
serenities which virtue raises in him, with the 
good-will and friendship which it procures him 
from others ; so when he dies, if these things 
prove mistakes, he does not outlive his error, 
nor shall it afterwards raise trouble or disquiet 
in him, if he then ceases to be; but, if these 
things be true, he shall be infinitely happy in 
that state, where his present small services 
shall be so excessively rewarded. The liber- 
tines, on the other side, as they know they 
must die, so the thoughts of death must be 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHKSTER. 283 

always melancholy to them ; they can have 
no '"^ asant view of that which yet they know 
cannot be very far from them ; the least pain- 
ful idea they can have of it is, that it is an 
extinction and ceasing to be, but they are not 
sure even of that ; some secret w^iispers with- 
in make them, W'hether they will or not, trem- 
ble at the apprehensions of another state ; 
neither their tinsel wit, nor superficial learning', 
nor their impotent assaults upon the weak 
side, as they think, of rehgion, nor the boldest 
notions of impiety, will hold them up then. 
Of all which I now present so lively an in- 
stance, as perhaps history can scarcely pa- 
rallel. 

Here were parts so exalted by nature, and 
improved by study, and yet so corrupted and 
debased by irreligion and vice, that he, who 
was made to be one of the glories of his age ^ 
was become a proverb, and, if his repentance 
had not interposed, \vould have been one of 
the greatest reproaches of it. He knew well 
the small strength of that weak cause, and at 
first despised, but afterw^ards abhorred it. 
He felt the mischiefs, and saw the madness 
of it ; and therefore, though he lived to the 
scandal of many, he died as much to the edi- 
fication of all those who saw him : and be- 
cause they were but a small number, he de- 



284 THE LIFE OF 

sired that he might even v/hen dead yet 
speak. He was willing nothing should be 
concealed that might cast reproach on him- 
self and on sin, and offer up glory to God 
and religion. So that, though he lived a 
heinous sinner, yet he died a most exemplary 
penitent. 

It would be a vain and ridiculous inference 
for any, from hence to draw arguments about 
the abstruse secrets of predestination, and to 
conclude, that, if they are of the number of 
the elect, they may live as they v/ill, and 
that Divine Grace will at some time or other 
violently constrain them, and irresistibly 
v/ork upon them. But as St. Paul was call- 
ed to that eminent service for which he was 
appointed, in so stupendous a manner as is 
no warrant for others to expect such a voca- 
tion, so, if upon some signal occasions such 
conversions fall out, which, how far they are 
short of miracles, I shall not determine, it is 
not only a vain, but a pernicious imagination, 
for any to go on in their ill ways upon a fond 
conceit and expectation that the like will 
befall them : for, whatsoever God's extraordi- 
nary dealings with some may be, we are sure 
his common way of working is, by offering 
these things to our rational faculties, which, 
by the assistances of his grace^ if we improve 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 285 

them all we can, shall be certainly effectual 
for our reformation; and, if we neglect or 
abuse these, we put ourselves beyond the 
common methods of God's mercy, and have 
no reason to expect that wonders should be 
wrought for our conviction ; which, though 
they sometimes happen, that they may give 
an effectual alarm for the awakening of 
others, yet it would destroy the whole design 
of religion, if men should depend upon, or 
look for, such an extraordinary and forcible 
operation of God's grace. 

And I hope that those who have had some 
sharp reflections on their past life, so as to be 
resolved to forsake their ill courses, will not 
take the least encouragement to themselves 
in that desperate and unreasonable resolution 
of putting off their repentance till they can 
sin no longer, from the hopes I have express- 
ed of this lord's obtaining mercy at last, and 
from thence presume, that they also shall be 
received when they turn to God on their 
death-beds : for, what mercy soever God may 
show to such as really were never inwardly 
touched before that time, yet there is no rea- 
son to think, that those who have dealt so 
disingenuously with God and their own souls, 
as designedly to put off their turning to him 
upon such considerations, should then be 



286 THE LIFE OF 

accepted with him. They may die suddenly, 
or by a disease that may so disorder their un- 
derstandings, that they shall not be in any 
capacity of reflecting on their past lives. 
The inward conversion of our minds is not so 
in our power that it can be effected without 
divine grace assisting ; and there is no reason 
for those, who have neglected these assis- 
tances all their lives, to expect them in so 
extraordinary a manner at their death. Nor 
can one, especially in a sickness that is quick 
and critical, be able to do those things that 

' are often indispensably necessary to make 
his repentance complete; and even in a 
longer disease, in which there are larger op- 
portunities for these things. Yet there is 
great reason to doubt of a repentance, begun 
and kept up merely by terror, and not from 
any ingenuous principle. In which, though 
I will not take on me to limit the mercies of 
God, which are boundless, yet this must be 
confessed, that to delay repentance with 
such a design, is to put the greatest concern- 
ment we have upon the most dangerous and 
desperate issue that is possible. 

But they that will still go on in their sins, 
and be so partial to them as to use all en- 
deavours to strengthen themselves in their 

evil course, even by these very things which 



JOHN EARL or ROCHESTER. 287 

the providence of God sets before them for 
the casting down of these strong holds of 
sin : vv^hat is to be said to such ? It is to be 
feared, that, if they obstinately persist, they 
will by degrees come within that curse. He 
that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he 
that is Jilthij, let him be filthy stilL But, if 
our Gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are 
lost, in whom the God of this world hath hlind- 
ed the minds of them which believe not, lest the 
light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is 
the image of God, should shine unto them. 



A SERMON 

PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF 

JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER, 
By ROBERT PARSONS, M. A. 

CHAPLAIN TO ANNE COUNTESS OF ROCHESTEtt. 



2 C 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

All the lewd and profane poems and libels 
of the late Lord Rochester having been, con- 
trary to his dying request, and in defiance of 
religion, government^ and common decency, 
published to the world ; and for the easier 
and surer propagation of vice, printed in 
penny books, and cried about the streets of 
this honourable city, without any offence or 
dislike taken at them : it is humbly hoped 
that this short discourse, which gives a tnie 
account of the death and repentance of that 
noble lord, may likewise, for the sake of his 
name, find a favourable reception among such 
persons : though the influence of it cannot be 
supposed to reach as far as the poison of the 
other books is spread ; which, by the strength 
of their own virulent corruption, are capable 
of doing more mischief than all the plays, 
and fairs, and stews, in and about this town 
can do t02:ether. 



I 



LUKE XV. 7. 

/ say unto you, that likewise joy shall he in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, wore 
than over ninety and nine just persons that 
need no repentance. 

If ever there were a subject that might de- 
serve and exhaust all the treasures of religious 
eloquence in the description of so great a 
man, and so great a sinner, as now lies before 
us ; together with the wonders of the Divine 
Goodness, in making him as great a penitent ; 
I think the present occasion affords one as 
remarkable as any place or age can produce. 

Indeed, so great and full a matter it is, 
that it is too big to corne out of my mouth , 
and perhaps not all of it fit or needful so to 
do. The greatness of his parts are well 
enough known, and of his sins too well, in 
the world ; and neither my capacity, nor ex- 
perience, nor my profession, will allow me to 
be so proper a judge either of the one or the 
other. Only as God has been pleased to 
make me a long while a sad spectator and a 
secret mourner for his sins, so has he at last 
graciously heard the prayers of his nearest re- 



292 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

lations and true friends for his conversion 
and repentance : and it is the good tidings of 
that especially, which God has done for his 
soul, that I am now to publish and tell abroad 
to the worlds not only by the obligations of 
mine office, in which I had the honour to be a 
weak minister to it, but by his own express 
and dying commands. 

Now, although to describe this worthily 
would require a wit equal to that with which 
he lived, and a devotion too equal to that with 
which he died, and to match either would be 
a very hard task ; yet, besides that I am not 
sufficient for these things, for who is? and 
that my thoughts have been rather privately 
busied to secure a real repentance to himself 
whilst living than to publish it abroad to 
others in an artificial dress after he is dead : 
I say, besides all this, I think I shall 
have less need to call in the aids of secular 
eloquence. The proper habit of repentance 
is not fine linen, or any delicate array, such 
as are used in the court, or king's houses, 
but sackcloth aiid ashes ; and the way, which 
God Almighty takes to convey it, is not by 
the words of man's wisdom, but by the plain- 
ness of his written word, assisted by the in- 
ward power and demonstration of the Spirit ; 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 293 

and the effects it works, and by which it dis- 
covers itself, are not any raptures of wit and 
fancy, but the most humble prostrations 
both of soul and spirit, and the captivating 
all human imaginations to the obedience 
of a despised religion and a crucified Saviour. 
And it is in this array I intend to bring out 
this penitent to you ; an array which I am 
sure he more valued, and desired to appear 
in, both to God and the world, than in all the 
triumphs of wit and gallantry ; and, therefore, 
waving all these rhetorical flourishes, as be- 
neath the solemnity of the occasion, and the 
majesty of that great and weighty truth I am 
now to deliver, I shall content myself with 
the office of a plain historian, to relate faith- 
fully and impartially what 1 saw and heard, 
especially during his penitential sorrows ; 
which, if all that hear me this day had been 
spectators of, there would then have been no 
need of a sermon to convince men ; but every 
man would have been as much a preacher to 
himself of this truth as I am, except these 
sorrows : and yet even these sorrows should 
be turned into joys too, if we would only do 
what we pray for, that the will of God may be 
done in earth as it is in heaven ; for so our 
blessed Lord assures us : '^ I say unto you, 

2 c ;i 



294i SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth/' &c. From which 1 
shall consider^ — 

I. The sinner particularly that is before us. 

II. The repentance of this sinner, together 
with the means, the time, and all probable 
sincerity of it. 

III. The joy that is in heaven, and should 
be on earth, for the repentance of this sinner. 

IV. I shall apply myself to all that hear 
me; that they would join in this joy, in 
praise and thanksgiving to God, for the con- 
version of this sinner ; and, if there be any 
that have been like him in their sins, that 
they would also speedily imitate him in their 
repentance. 

And, I. Let us consider the person before 
us, as he certainly was a great sinner. But, 
because man was upright before he was a sin- 
ner, and, to measure the greatness of his fall, 
it will be necessary to take a view of that 
height from which he fell, give me leave to 
go back a little, to look into the rock from 
which he was hewn, the quality, family, edu- 
cation, and personal accomplishments, of this 
great man. In doing of which, I think no 
man will charge me with any design of cus- 
tomary flattery or formality ; since I intend 
only thereby to show the greatness and un- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER, 295 

happiness of his folly, in perverting so many 
excellent abilities and advantages for virtue 
and piety in the service of sin, and so be- 
coming a more universal, insinuating, and 
prevailing example of it. 

As for his family, on both sides, from which 
he was descended, they were some of the 
most famous in their generations. His grand- 
father was that excellent and truly great man, 
Charles, Lord Wilmot, Viscount Athlone in 
Ireland. Henry, his father, who inherited the 
same title and greatness, was by his late ma- 
jesty. King Charles I. created Baron of Ad- 
derbury, in Oxfordshire, and, by his present 
majesty, Earl of Rochester. He was a man 
of signal loyalty and integrity indeed ; and of 
such courage and conduct in military affairs 
as became a great general. His mother was 
the relict of Sir Francis Henry Lee, of Ditch- 
ley, in the county of Oxford, Baronet, grand- 
mother to the present right honourable Earl of 
Litchfield, and the daughter of that generous 
and honourable gentleman. Sir John St. John, 
of Lyddiard, in the county of Wilts, baronet, 
whose family was so remarkable for loyalty, 
that several of his sons willingly offered them- 
selves in the day of battle, and died for it ; 
and, whilst the memory of the English or Irish 
rebellion lasts, that family cannot want a due 



296 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

veneration in the minds of any person that 
loves either God or the King. 

As for his education, it was in Wadham 
College, Oxford, under the care of that wise 
and excellent governor, Dr. Blandford, the late 
Bp. of Worcester ; there it was that he laid a 
good foundation of learningand study, though 
he afterwards built upon that foundation hay 
and stubble. There he first sucked from the 
breast of his mother, the University, those per- 
fections of wit, and eloquence, and poetry, 
which afterwards, by his own corrupt sto- 
mach, were turned into poison to himself and 
others ; which certainly can be no more a 
blemish to those illustrious seminaries of piety 
and good learning, than a disobedient child 
is to a wise and virtuous father, or the fall of 
man to the excellency of Paradise. 

A wit he had so rare and fruitful in its in- 
vention, and withal so choice and delicate in 
its judgment, that there is nothing wanting in 
his composures to give a full answer to that 
question. What and where wit is ? except the 
purity and choice of subject. For, had such 
excellent seeds but fallen upon good ground, 
and, instead of pitching upon a beast or a 
lust, been raised up on high, to celebrate the 
mysteries of the Divine Love, in psalms, and 
hymns, and spiritual songs ; I persuade my- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 297 

self we might by this time have received from 
his pen as excellent an idea of divine poetry? 
under the gospel, useful to the teaching of 
virtue, especially in this generation, as his 
profane verses have been to destroy it. And 
I am confident, had God spared him a longer 
life, this w^ould have been the whole business 
of it, as 1 know it was the vow and purpose of 
his sickness. 

His natural talent was excellent ; but he 
had hugely improved it by learning and in- 
dustry, being thoroughly acquainted with all 
the classic authors, both Greek and Latin ; a 
thing very rare, if not peculiar to him, among 
those of his quality : which yet he used not, 
as other poets have done, to translate or steal 
from them ; but rather to better and improve 
them by his own natural fancy. And who- 
ever reads his composures will find all things 
in them so peculiarly great, new, and excel- 
lent, that he will easily pronounce that;, though 
he has lent to many others, yet he has bor- 
rowed of none ; and that he has been as far 
from a sordid imitation of those before him, as 
he will be from being reached by those that 
follow him. 

His other personal accomplishments in all 
the perfections of a gentleman, for the court 
or country, whereof he was known of all men 



298 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

to be a very great master^ it is no part of my 
business to describe or understand ; and, 
whatever they were in themselves, I am sure 
they were but miserable comforters to him, 
since they only ministered to his sins, and 
made his example the more fatal and danger- 
ous ; for so we may own, nay, I am obliged 
by him not to hide, but to show, the rocks 
which others may avoid, that he was once one 
of the greatest of sinners. 

And truly none but one so great in parts 
could be so. His sins were like his parts, 
from which they sprang, all of them high and 
extraordinary. He seemed to affect some- 
thing singular and paradoxical in his im- 
pieties, as well as in his writings, above the 
reach and thought of other men ; taking as 
much pains to draw others in, and to pervert 
the right ways of virtue, as the apostles and 
primitive saints did to save their own souls 
and them that heard them. For this was the 
heightening and amazing circumstance of his 
sins, that he was so diligent and industrious 
to recommend and propagate them ; not like 
those of old that hated the light, but those 
the prophet mentions (Isaiah iii. 9.) ^* Who 
declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not ; 
that take it upon their shoulders, and bind it 
to them as a crown f' framing arguments for 



JOHJSI EARL OF ROCHESTER. 299 

sin, making proselytes to it, and. writing pa- 
negyrics upon vice. 

Nay, so confirmed was he in sin, that he 
oftentimes almost died a martyr for it. God 
was pleased sometimes to punish him with the 
effects of his folly ; yet, till now, he confessed 
they had no power to melt him into true re- 
pentance ; or, if at any time he had some lucid 
intervals from his folly and madness, yet, 
alas ! how short and transitory were they ! 
All that goodness was but as a morning cloud, 
and as the early dew that vanishes away : 
he still returned to the same excess of riot ; 
and that with so much the more greediness, 
the longer he had fasted from it. 

And yet, even this desperate sinner, that 
one would think had made a covenant with 
deaths and was at an agreement with hell, 
and just upon the brink of them both, God, 
to magnify the riches of his grace and mercy, 
was pleased to snatch as a brand out of the 
fire : as St. Paul, though '' before a blas- 
phemer, a persecutor, an injurious, yet ob- 
tained mercy, that in him Christ Jesus might 
show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to 
them that should hereafter believe on him, to 
everlasting hfe.'' 1 Tim. i. 13, 16. So God 
struck him to the ground, as it were by a 



300 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

light from heaven, and a voice of thunder 
round about him : insomuch that now the 
scales fell from his eyes, as they did from St. 
Paul's ; his stony heart was opened, and 
streams of tears gushed out, the bitter but 
wholesome tears of true repentance. 

And, that this may appear to be so, I 
think it necessary to account for these two 
things. 

I. For the means of it ; that it was not 
barely the effect of sickness, or the fear of 
death ; but the hand of God also working in 
them and by them manifestly. 

II. For the sincerity of it ; which though 
none but God, that sees the heart, can tell 
certainly, yet man even also may and ought 
to believe it; not only in the judgment of 
charity, but of moral justice, from all evident 
signs of it which were possible to be given by 
one in his condition. 

And 1st. For the means or method of his 
repentance. That which prepared the way 
for it was a sharp and painful sickness, with 
which God was pleased to visit him ; the way 
which the Almighty often takes to reduce 
the wandering sinner to the knowledge of 
God and himself. " I will be unto Ephraim 
as a lion, and as a young lion unto the house 
of Judah ; I, even I, will tear and go away. 



JOHN EARL OF KOCHESTER. 301 

and none shall relieve him ; I will go and re- 
turn to my place, till they acknowledge their 
offence and seek my face ; and in their afflic- 
tion they will seek me early." Hos.v. 14,15. 

And, though to forsake our sins then, when 
we can no longer enjoy them^ seems to be 
rather the effect of impotency and necessity 
than of choice, and so not so acceptable or 
praise-worthy, yet we find God Almighty 
often uses the one to bring about the other, 
and improves a forced abstinence from sin 
into a settled loathing and a true detestation 
of it. 

It is true, there are such stubborn natures, 
that, like clay, are rather hardened by the 
fire of afflictions : ungracious children, that 
fly in the face of their heavenly Father in the 
very instant when he is correcting them ; or 
it may be, like those children who promise 
wonders then, but presently after forget all. 
Such as these we have described, Psal. Ixxviii. 
34fy 35, 36, 37. "When he slew them, then 
they sought him, and they returned and in- 
quired early after God; then they remem- 
bered that God was their rock, and that the 
high God was their Redeemer ; nevertheless 
they did but flatter him with their mouth, 
and lied unto him with their tongues, for 
their heart was not right with him, neither 
2 D 



302 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

continued they steadfast in his covenant/' 
And it is probable this has been the case 
formerly of this person. But there was an 
evident difference betwixt the effects of this 
sickness upon him and many others before. 
He had other sentiments of things now, (he 
told me,) and acted upon quite different prin- 
ciples : he was not vexed with it as it was 
painful, or hindered him from his sins, which 
he would have rolled under his tongue all the 
while, and longed again to be at ; but he 
submitted patiently to it, accepting it as the 
hand of God ; and was thankful, blessing 
and praising God not only in but for his ex- 
tremities. There was now no cursing, no 
railing or reproaches to his servants or those 
about him, which in other sicknesses were 
their usual entertainment : but he treated 
them with all the meekness and patience in 
the world, begging pardon frequently of the 
meanest of them but for a hasty word, which 
the extremity of his sickness, and the sharp- 
ness of his pain, might easily force from him. 
His prayers were not so much for ease, or 
health, or a continuance in life, as for grace, 
and faith, and perfect resignation to the will 
of God. So that I think we may not only 
charitably but justly conclude, that his sick- 
ness was not the chief ingredient, but, through 



JOHN EATIL OF ROCHESTER. 303 

the grace of God, an effectual means, of a 
true though late repentance, as will best be 
judged by the marks I am now to give you 
of the sincerity of it ; for which I am in the 
next place to account. 

II. And it was the power of Divine Grace, 
and of that only, that broke through all those 
obstacles that usually attend a man in his 
circumstances ; that God, who is a God of 
infinite compassion and forbearance, allowed 
him leisure and opportunity for repentance ; 
that he awakened him from his spiritual 
slumber by a pungent sickness ; that he gave 
him such a presence of mind, as both to pro- 
vide prudently for his worldly affairs, and yet 
not to be distracted or diverted by them from 
the thoughts of a better world ; that lengthen- 
ed out his day of grace, and accompanied the 
ordinary means of salvation, and weak minis* 
try of his word, with the convincing and over- 
ruling power of his Spirit to his conscience ; 
which word of God came to him quick and 
powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, 
piercing even to the dividing asunder of his 
soul and spirit ; and at last the Spirit of God 
witnessed to his spirit that now he was be- 
come one of the children of God. 

Now, if the thief upon the cross, an in- 
stance too much abused, was therefore ac- 



L 



304 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

cepted, because accompanied with all the 
effects of a sincere convert which his condi- 
tion was capable of; as confession of Christ's 
divinity in the midst of the blasphemies of 
pharisees and his own lewd companion, and 
desertion of even Christ's disciples ; if his re- 
pentance be therefore judged real, because he 
seems to be more concerned in the remem- 
brance of Christ's future kingdom than his 
own death ; if St. Paul was approved by the 
same more abundant labours which he com- 
mended in the Corinthians, " Yea, what 
zeal ! what fear ! what vehement desire V* 
2 Cor, vii. 11 . I think I shall make it appear, 
that the repentance of this person was ac- 
companied with the like hopeful symptoms ; 
and I am so sensible of that awful pre- 
sence both of God and man, before whom I 
speak, who are easily able to discover my 
failings, that I shall not deliver any thing 
but what I know to be a strict and religious 
truth. 

Upon my first visit to him. May 26, just at 
his return from his journey out of the West, 
he most gladly received me, showed me ex- 
traordinary respects upon the score of mine 
office, thanked God who had in mercy and 
good providence sent me to him who so much 
needed my prayers and counsels ; and acknow- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 305 

ledged how unworthily heretofore he had 
treated that order of men, reproaching them 
that they were proud, and prophesied only for 
rewards ; but now he had learned how to 
value them ; that he esteemed them the ser- 
vants of the most high God, who were to show 
to him the way to everlasting life. 

At the same time I found him labouring 
under strange trouble and conflicts of mind, 
his spirit wounded, and his conscience full of 
terrors. Upon his journey, he told me^ he 
had been arguing with greater vigour against 
God and religion than ever he had done in his 
lifetime before, and that he was resolved to 
run them down with all the arguments and 
spite in the world ; but, like the great con- 
vert, St. Paul, he found it hard to kick 
against the pricks ; for God, at that time, had 
so struck his heart by his immediate hand, 
that presently he argued as strongly for God 
and virtue as before he had done against it ; 
that God strangely opened his heart, creating 
in his mind most awful and tremendous 
thoughts and ideas of the Divine Majesty, 
with a delightful contemplation of the Divine 
nature and attributes, and of the loveliness of 
religion and virtue. I never, said he, was 
advanced thus far towards happiness in my 
life before, though, upon the commission of 
2 D 2 



306 SERxMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

some sins extraordinary, I have had some 
checks and warnings considerable from within, 
but still struggled with them, and so wore 
them off again. The most observable that I 
remember was this : one day, at an atheisti- 
cal meeting at a person of quality's, I under- 
took to manage the cause, and was the prin- 
cipal disputant against God and piety, and 
for my performances received the applause of 
the whole company ; upon which my mind 
was terribly struck, and I immediately replied 
thus to myself : — Good God! that a man that 
walks upright, that sees the wonderful works 
of God, and has the use of his senses and 
reason, should use them to the defying of his 
Creator ! But, though this was a good begin- 
ning towards my conversion, to find my con- 
science touched for my sins, yet it went off 
again ; nay, all my life long, I had a secret 
value and reverence for an honest man, and 
loved morality in others. But I had formed 
an odd scheme of religion to myself, which 
would solve all that God or conscience might 
force upon me ; yet I was not ever well re- 
conciled to the business of Christianity, nor 
had that reverence for the gospel of Christ 
as T ought to have. — Which estate of mind 
continued till the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah 
was read to him, wherein there is a lively 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 307 

description of the sufferings of our Saviour, 
and the benefits thereof, and some other por- 
tions of scripture; by the power and effi- 
cacy of which word, assisted by his Holy 
Spirit, God so wrought upon his heart, that 
he declared that the mysteries of the passion 
appeared as clear and plain to him as ever 
any thing did that was represented in a glass ; 
so that that joy and admiration, which pos- 
sessed his soul upon the reading of God's 
word to him, was remarkable to all about 
him ; and he had so much delight in his tes- 
timonies, that, in my absence, he begged his 
mother and lady to read the same to him fre- 
quently, and was unsatisfied, notwithstanding 
his great pain and weakness, till he had 
learned the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah with- 
out book. 

At the same time, discoursing of his man- 
ner of life from his youth up, and which all 
men knew was too much devoted to the ser- 
vice of sin, and that the lusts of the flesh, of 
the eye, and the pride of life, had captivated 
him ; he was very large and particular in his 
acknowledgments about it, more ready to ac- 
cuse himself than I or any one else can be ; 
publicly crying out, " O blessed God, can such 
a horrid creature as I am be accepted by thee, 
who has denied thy being, and contemned thy 



308 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

power V^ Asking often, " Can there be mercy 
and pardon for me ? Will God own such a 
wretch as I ?" and in the middle of his sick- 
ness said, '' Shall the unspeakable joys of 
heaven be conferred on me ? O mighty Sa- 
viour ! never, but through thine infinite love 
and satisfaction ! Oh never, but by the pur- 
chase of thy blood !" adding, that with all ab- 
horrency he did reflect upon his former life ; 
that sincerely, and from his heart, he did re- 
pent of all that folly and madness which he 
had committed. 

Indeed, he had a true and lively sense of 
God's great mercy to him, in striking his hard 
heart, and laying his conscience open, which 
hitherto was deaf to all God's calls and 
methods : saying, if that God, who died for 
great as well as less sinners, did not speedily 
apply his infinite merits to his poor soul, his 
wound was such as no man could conceive or 
bear ; crying out, that he was the vilest wretch 
and dog that the sun shined upon, or the 
earth bore ; that he now saw his error, in not 
living up to that reason which God endued 
him with, and which he unworthily vilified and 
contemned ; wished he had been a starving 
leper crawling in a ditch ; that he had been a 
link-boy or a beggar ; or for his whole life 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 309 

confined to a dungeon, rather than thus to 
to have sinned against God. 

How remarkable was his faith, in a hearty 
embracing and devout confession of all the 
articles of our Christian religion, and all the 
divine mysteries of the gospel ! saying, that 
that absurd and foolish philosophy, which the 
world so much admired, propagated by the 
late Mr, Hobbes and others, had undone him 
and many more of the best parts of the nation ; 
who, without God's great mercy to them, may 
never, 1 believe, attain to such a repentance. 

I must not omit to mention — His faithful 
adherence to, and casting himself entirely 
upon, the mercies of Jesus Christ, and the 
free grace of God declared to repenting sinners 
through him ; with a thankful remembrance of 
his life, death, and resurrection ; begging God 
to strengthen his faith, and often crying out, 
" Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief." 

His mighty love and esteem of the Holy 
Scriptures, his resolutions to read them fre- 
quently and meditate upon them, if God 
should spare him, having already tasted the 
good word ; for, having spoken to his hearty 
he acknowledged all the seeming absurdities 
and contradictions thereof, fancied by men of 
corrupt and reprobate judgments, were vanish- 



SIO SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

ed ; and the excellency and beauty appeared, 
being come to receive the truth in the love 
of it. 

His extraordinary fervent devotions in his 
frequent prayers of his own, most excel- 
lent and correct ; amongst the rest, for the 
king, in such a manner as became a dutiful 
subject and a truly grateful servant ; for the 
church and nation, for some particular re- 
lations, and then for all men ; his calling fre- 
quently upon me at all hours to pray with 
him or read the Scriptures to him ; and to- 
ward the end of his sickness, he would heart- 
ily desire God to pardon his infirmities, if he 
should not be so wakeful and intent through 
the whole duty as he wished to be ; and that, 
though the flesh was weak, yet the spirit was 
willing, and he hoped God would accept that. 

His continual invocation of God's grace and 
Holy Spirit to sustain him, to keep him from 
all evil thoughts, from all temptations and di- 
abolical suggestions, and every thing which 
might be prejudicial to that religious temper 
of mind which God had now so happily en- 
dued him withal ; crying out, one night es- 
pecially, how terribly the tempter did assault 
him, by casting upon him lewd and wicked 
imaginations ! But I thank God, said he, I 
abhor them all by the power of his grace, 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 311 

which I am sure is sufficient for me ; I have 
overcome them : it is the malice of the devil, 
because I am rescued from him ; and the good- 
ness of God that frees me from all my spiritual 
enemies. 

His great joy at his lady's conversion from 
popery to the church of England, being, as he 
termed it, a faction supported only by fraud 
and cruelty, which was by her done with de- 
liberation and mature judgment ; the dark 
mists of which have for some months before 
been breaking away, but now cleared by her 
receiving the blessed sacrament with her dying 
husband, at the receiving of which no man 
could express more joy and devotion than he 
did ; and having handled the word of life, and 
seen the salvation of God, in the preparation 
of his mind, he was now ready to depart in 
peace. 

His hearty concern for the pious education 
of his children, wishing that his son might 
never be a wit, that is, as he himself explain- 
ed it, one of those wretched creatures who 
pride themselves in abusing God and religion, 
denying his being or his providence ; but that 
he might become an honest and religious 
man, which could only be the support and 
blessing of his family, complaining what a 
vicious and naughty world they were brought 



312 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

into, and that no fortunes or honours were 
comparable to the love and favour of God to 
them, in whose name he blessed them, pray- 
ed for them, and committed them to his pro- 
tection. 

His strict charge to those persons in whose 
custody his papers were, to burn all his pro- 
fane and lewd writings, as being only fit to 
promote vice and immorality, by which he 
had so highly offended God, and shamed and 
blasphemed that holy religion into which he 
had been baptized ; and all his obscene and 
filthy pictures, which were so notoriously scan- 
dalous. 

His readiness to make restitution, to the ut- 
most of his power, to all persons whom he 
had injured ; and for those whom he could 
not make a compensation to, he prayed for 
God's and their pardons. His remarkable 
justice in taking all possible care for the pay- 
ment of his debts, which before he confessed 
he had not so fairly and effectually done. 

His readiness to forgive all injuries done 
against him ; some, more particularly men- 
tioned, which were great and provoking ; nay, 
annexing thereto all the assurance of a future 
friendship, and hoping he should be as free- 
ly forgiven at the hand of God. 

How tender and concerned was he for his 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 313 

servants about him in his extremities, mani- 
fested by the beneficence of his will to them, 
pitying their troubles in watching with him 
and attending him, treating them with can- 
dour and kindness, as if they had been his in- 
timates ! 

How hearty were his endeavours to be ser- 
viceable to those about him, exhorting them 
to the fear and love of God, and to make a 
good use of his forbearance and long-suffer- 
ing to sinners, which should lead them to re- 
pentance ! And here I must not pass by his 
pious and most passionate exclamation to a 
gentleman of some character, who came to 
visit him upon his death-bed : " Oh remem- 
ber that you contemn God no more ! He is 
an avenging God, and will visit you for your 
sins. He will, in mercy, I hope, touch your 
conscience, sooner or later, as he has done 
mine. You and I have been friends and sin- 
ners together a great while, therefore I am the 
more free with you. We have been all mis* 
taken in our conceits and opinions, our per- 
suasions have been false and groundless ; 
therefore God grant you repentance.'^ And 
seeing him the next day again, he said to 
him, " Perhaps you were disobliged by my 
plainness to you yesterday ; I spake the words 
of truth and soberness to you, and," striking 



314 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

his hand upon his breast said, ^' I hope God 
will touch your heart/' 

Likewise his commands to me to preach 
abroad, and to let all men know, if they knew 
it not already, how severely God had disciplin- 
ed him for his sins by his afflicting hand ; that 
his sufferings were most just, though he had 
laid ten thousand times more upon him ; how 
he had laid one stripe upon another because 
of his grievous provocations, till he had 
brought him home to himself; that, in his 
former visitations, he had not that blessed 
effect he was now sensible of. He had for- 
merly some loose thoughts and slight reso- 
lutions of reforming, and designed to be bet- 
ter, because even the present consequences of 
sin were still pestering him, and were so trou- 
blesome and inconvenient to him ; but that 
now he had other sentiments of things, and 
acted upon other principles. 

His willingness to die, if it pleased God, re- 
signing himself always to the Divine disposal ; 
but if God should spare him yet a longer 
time here, he hoped to bring glory to the 
name of God in the whole course of his life, 
and particularly by his endeavours to con- 
vince others, and to assure them of the dan- 
ger of their condition, if they continued im- 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHKSTER. 315 

penitent, and how graciously God had dealt 
with him. 

His great sense of his obligations to those 
excellent men, the right reverend my Lord 
Bishop of Oxford Dr. Fell, and Dr. Mar- 
shall, for their charitable and frequent visits 
to him, and prayers with him ; and Dr. Bur- 
net, who came on purpose from London to 
see him ; who were all very serviceable to his 
repentance. 

His extraordinary duty and reverence to 
his mother^ with all the grateful respects to 
her imaginable, and kindness to his good lady 
beyond expression, which may well enhance 
such a loss to them, and to his children^ 
obliging them with all the endearments that a 
good husband or a tender father could be- 
stow. 

To conclude these remarks, 1 shall only 
read to you his dying remonstrance, suffi- 
ciently attested and signed by his own hand, 
as his truest sense, which I hope may be use- 
ful for that good end he designed it, in man- 
ner and form following. 

** For the benefit of all those whom 1 may 
have drawn into sin by my example and en- 
couragement, I leave to the world this my 



316 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

last declaration, which I deliver in the pre- 
sence of the great God, who knows the 
secrets of all hearts, and before whom I am 
now appearing to be judged. 

*' That, from the bottom of my soul, I de- 
test and abhor the whole course of my former 
wicked life ; that I think I can never suffi- 
ciently admire the goodness of God, who has 
given me a true sense of my pernicious opi- 
nions and vile practices, by which I have 
hitherto lived without hope and without God 
in the world ; have been an open enemy to 
Jesus Christ, doing the utmost despite to the 
Holy Spirit of Grace. And that the greatest 
testimony of my charity to such is, to warn 
them, in the name of God, and as they re- 
gard the welfare of their immortal souls, no 
more to deny his being or his providence, or 
despise his goodness ; no more to make a 
mock of sin, or contemn the pure and excel- 
lent religion of my ever blessed Redeemer, 
through whose merits alone, I, one of the 
greatest sinners, do yet hope for mercy and 
forgiveness. Amen. 
** Declared and signed in the presence of 

" Anne Rochester, 

*^ Robert Parsons. 

'' June 19, 1680. '' J. Rochester." 



JOHN EARL OF llOCHESTER. 317 

And now I cannot but mention with joy 
and admiration, that steady temper of mind 
which he enjoyed through the whole course of 
his sickness and repentance ; which must 
proceed, not from a hurry and perturbation of 
mind or body, arising from the fear of death or 
dread of hell only, but from an ingenuous love 
to God, and an uniform regard to virtue, suita- 
ble to that solemn declaration of his, '* I would 
not commit the least sin to gain a kingdom," 
with all possible symptoms of a lasting perse- 
verance in it, if God should have restored him. 
To which may be added, his comfortable per- 
suasions of God*s accepting him to his mercy, 
saying, three or four days before his death, 
*^ I shall die, but oh, what unspeakable glo- 
ries do I see ! what joys, beyond thought or 
expression, am I sensible of! I am assured 
of God's mercy to me through Jesus Christ. 
Oh how I long to die and be with my Sa- 
viour r 

The time of his sickness and repentance 
was just nine weeks ; in all which time he 
was so much master of his reason, and had so 
clear an understanding, saving thirty hours, 
about the middle of it, in which he was deli- 
rious, that he had never dictated or spoken 
more composed in his life : and therefore, if 
any shall continue to say his piety was the 
2 e2 



^18 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

effect of madness or vapours, let me tell them, 
it is highly disingenuous, and that the asser- 
tion is as silly as it is wicked. And, more- 
over, that the force of what I have delivered 
may not be evaded by wicked men, who are 
resolved to harden their hearts, maugre all 
convictions, by saying, this was done in a 
corner ; I appeal for the truth thereof, to all 
sorts of persons who^ in considerable numbers, 
visited and attended him, and more particu- 
larly to those eminent physicians who were 
near him, and conversant with him in the 
whole course of his tedious sickness ; and 
who, if any, are competent judges of a phrensy 
or delirium. 

There are many more excellent things 
which in my absence have occasionally 
dropped from his mouth, that will not come 
within the narrow compass of a sermon ; these, 
I hope, will sufficiently prove what I produce 
them for. And, if any shall be still unsatis- 
fied here in this hard-hearted generation, it 
matters not, let them at their cost be unbe- 
lievers still, so long as this excellent penitent 
enjoys the comfort of his repentance. And 
now, from all these admirable signs, we have 
great reason to believe comfortably, that his 
repentance was real, and his end happy ; and 
accordingly imitate the neighbours and cousins 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 319 

of Elizabeth, (Luke i. 58.) who, when they 
heard how the Lord had showed great mercy 
upon her, came and rejoiced with her. 

Thus his dear mother should rejoice, that 
the son of her love and of her fears, as well as 
of her bowels, is now born again into a better 
world ; adopted by his Heavenly Father, and 
gone before her to take possession of an eter- 
nal inheritance. 

II. His truly loving consort should rejoice, 
that God has been so gracious to them both, 
as at the same time to give him a sight of his 
errors in point of practice, and herself (not 
altogether without his means and endeavours) 
a sight of her's in point of faith. And truly, 
considering the great prejudices and dangers 
of the Roman religion, I think I may aver, 
that there is joy in heaven, and should be on 
earth, for her conversion as well as his, 

III, His noble and most hopeful issue 
should rejoice as their years are capable ; not 
that a dear and loving father has left them, 
but that, since he must leave them^ he has left 
them the example of a penitent, and not of a 
sinner; the blessing of a saint, in recom- 
mending them to an all-sufficient Father, and 
not entailing on them the fatal curse that 
attends the posterity of the wicked and im- 
penitent. 



320 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

IV. All good men should rejoice to see the 
triumphs of the cross in these latter days^ and 
the words of Divine Wisdom and Power. 
And bad men certainly, whenever they con- 
sider it, are most of all concerned to joy and 
rejoice in it, as a condemned malefactor is to 
hear that a fellow-criminal has got his par- 
don, and that he may do so too if he speedily 
sue for it. 

And this joy of all will still be the greater, 
if we compare it with the joy there is in heaven 
in the case of just persons that need no re- 
pentance, viz. that need not such a solemn 
extraordinary repentance, or the whole change 
of heart and mind, as great sinners do : and 
of this my text pronounces, that there is 
" greater joy in heaven over one such sinner, 
that truly repenteth, than there is over ninety 
and nine just persons that need not such re- 
pentance." One reason of which we may 
conceive to be this : that such a penitent's 
former failings are ordinarily the occasion of a 
greater and more active piety afterwards ; as 
our convert earnestly wished that God would 
be pleased to spare him but one year more, 
that in that he might honour his name propor- 
tionably to the dishonour done to God in his 
whole life past. And we see St. Paul laboured 
more abundantly than all the apostles in the 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. 32l 

planting of the church, because he had raged 
furiously before in the destruction of it ; and 
our Saviour himself tells us, ** that to whom 
much is forgiven, they will love much ; but 
to whom little is forgiven, they will love 
little/' 

It is certainly the more safe, indeed the 
only safe way, to be constantly virtuous ; and 
he that is wise indeed, i. e. wise unto salva- 
tion, will endeavour to be one of those that 
need no repentance ; I mean, that entire and 
whole work of beginning anew ; but will draw 
out the same thread through his whole life, 
and let not the sun go down upon any of his 
sins : but then the other repentance is more 
remarkable, and^ where it is real, the more ef- 
fectual, to produce a fervent and a fruitful 
piety ; besides the greater glory to God in the 
influence of the example. Which may pro- 
bably be a farther reason of the excessive joy 
of the angels at the conversion of such a sin- 
ner ; because they, who are better acquainted 
with human nature than we, knowing it apt, 
like the Pharisees, to demand a sign from 
heaven for the reformation of corrupted cus- 
toms, discern likewise, that such desperate 
spiritual recoveries will seem so many openings 
of the heavens in the descent of the Holy 
Dove, visible to the standers by, and accord- 



322 SEllMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

ingly will have the greater influence upon 
them. And it is this, in the last place, that 
I am to recommend to all that hear me this 
day. 

And, having thus discharged the office of 
an historian, in a faithful representation of 
the repentance and conversion of this great 
sinner, give me leave now to bespeak you as 
an ambassador of Christ, and, in his name, 
earnestly persuade you to be reconciled to 
him, and to follow this illustrious person, not 
in his sins any more, but in his sorrows for 
them, and his forsaking them. If there be 
any in this place, or elsewhere, who have 
been drawn into a complacency or practice of 
any kind of sin from his example, let those 
especially be persuaded to break off their sins 
by repentance, by the same example ; that as 
he has been for the fall, so he may now be 
for the rising again, of many in Israel. God 
knows there are too many that are wise 
enough to discern and follow the examples of 
evil, but to do good from those examples they 
have no power ; like those absurd flatterers 
we read of, who could imitate Plato in his 
crookedness, Aristotle in his stammering, and 
Alexander the Great in the bending of his 
neck and the shrillness of his voice^ but either 
could not, or would not, imitate them in any 



JOHN EARL or liOCHESTER. 323 

of their perfections. Such as these I would 
beseech, in their cooler seasons, to ask them- 
selves that question, " What fruit had you in 
those things whereof you now are ashamed, 
for the end of these things is death V And 
if any encourage themselves in their wicked- 
ness from this example, resolving however to 
enjoy the good things that are present^ to fill 
themselves with costly wines, and to let no 
part of pleasure pass by them untasted, sup- 
posing, with the gospel rich man, that when 
one comes to them from the dead, when sick- 
ness or old age approaches, that then they 
will repent ; let such as these consider the 
dreadful hazard they run by such pernicious 
counsels. It may be, and it is but just with 
God it should be, that, whilst they are mak- 
ing provision for the flesh to fulfil the 
lusts thereof, and are saying to their souls, 
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
years, therefore take thine ease, eat, drink, 
and be merry ; perhaps just then at the same 
time the hand of God m^ay be writing, upon 
the walls of their habitations, that fatal sen- 
tence, '' Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be 
required of thee, and then whose shall all 
those things be which thou hast promised ?" 
And what sad reflections must such a one 
need make upon his own folly, when he sees 



^4^ SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

all that mirth and ease, which he has pro- 
mised himself for so many years, must be at 
an end in a very few hours ? And not only 
so, but that mirth turned into bowlings, and 
that ease into a bed of flames ; when the soul 
must be torn away on a sudden from the 
things it loved, and go where it will hate to 
live, and yet cannot die. And were it not 
better for us to embrace cordially the things 
which belong to our everlasting peace, before 
they are hid from our eyes ? Were it not 
better for us all to be wise betimes, by pre- 
venting such a danger, than to open our eyes, 
as the unhappy rich man did, when w^e are in 
a place of torment? — Be persuaded then, 
with humble, penitent, and obedient hearts, 
to meet the blessed Jesus, who is now on the 
way, and comes to us in the person and in 
the bowels of a Saviour, wooing us to accept 
those easy conditions of pardon and peace 
offered in his holy gospel, rather than to stay 
till he become our adversary, and our judge 
too, when he will deliver us over to the tor- 
mentors, till we have paid the utmost farthing, 
i. e. to all eternity : when those, who have 
made a mock at sin all their lives, and laugh- 
ed at the pretended cheats of religion and its 
priests, shall find themselves at last the great- 
est fools, and the most sadly cheated in the 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. S25 

world: for God will then ** laugh at their ca- 
lamity, and mock when their fear cometh, 
when it cometh as desolation, and their de- 
struction as a whirlwind," And since they 
would not suffer his mercy to rejoice over 
bis justice, nor cause any joy in heaven, as 
the text mentions, in their conversion, his 
justice will certainly rejoice over his mercy, 
and cause joy in heaven, as it did at the fall 
of Babylon, which would not be cured,* in 
their confusion. And. oh ! that there was 
such a heart in them, that they would con- 
sider this betim.es ! that, in the midst of their 
carnal jollities, they would but vouchsafe 
one regard what may happen hereafter, and 
what will certainly be the end of these things ! 
For however the fruits of sin may seem plea- 
sant to the eye, and to be desired to make 
one seem wise and witty to the world, yet, 
alas ! they are but empty and unsatisfactory 
at present, and leave a mortal sting behind 
them, and bitterness in the latter end : like 
the book St. John eat,t '^ which in his mouth 
was sweet as honey, but, as soon as he had 
eat it, his belly was bitter." And that God 
should please at last to bring men back in 
their old age from their sinful courses, by 
a way of weeping, to pluck them as firebrands 

* Rev. xix. ]. f Rev. X. 10. 

2 F 



326 SEliMON AT THE FUNERAL OF 

out of everlasting burnings 1 Yet if men con- 
sider how rare and difficult a thing it is to be 
born again when one is old ; how many pangs 
and violences to nature there must needs be 
to put off the habits and inclinations to old 
sins^ as difficult, saith the prophet, as for the 
leopard to change his spots, or the ^Ethio- 
pian his skin ; and then, when that is done, 
what scars and weaknesses even a cure must 
leave behind : — I say, he that duly considers 
this, will think it better to secure his salva- 
tion, and all his present true comforts, by pre- 
serving his innocency, or alleviating his work 
by a daily repentance for lesser failings, 
than to venture upon one single chance of a 
death-bed repentance ; which is no more to 
be depended upon, for the performance or ac- 
ceptance, than it can encourage any man not 
to labour, because Eli as was fed by ravens, 
or the Israelites with manna from heaven. 

If then there be any, though, alas! that 
need not be asked, that have made the great- 
ness of their wit, or birth, or fortune, instru- 
ments of iniquity to iniquity ; let them now 
convert them to that original noble use for 
which God intended them, namely, to be in- 
struments of righteousness unto holiness. 

To these especially that are thus great, not 



JOHK EAllL OF ROCHESTER. S9J 

only God, but this great person also, by my 
mouth, being dead yet speaketh ; for as St. 
Paul seemed more especially concerned for 
his brethren and kinsmen according to the 
flesh ; and even the rich man in hell, though 
sufficiently distracted by his own sufferings, 
yet seems hugely desirous that one might be 
sent from the dead to his brethren, that he 
might testify unto them^ lest they also come 
into that place of torment ; so this illustrious 
convert, after God had opened his eyes to see 
his follies, was more especially desirous of 
the salvation of those that were his brethren, 
though not in the flesh, yet in the greatness 
of their quality and of their sins ; passion- 
ately wishing, that all such were not only 
almost, but altogether, such as he now was, 
saving his bodiiy afllictions ; and of great 
force, methinks, should the admonitions of a 
dying friend be. 

Now these especially 1 would beseech, as 
the minister of Christ, and such as, though 
we are reviled, we bless ; though we are de- 
famed, we entreat ; to sufler the word of ex- 
hortation, that they would not terminate their 
eyes upon the outward pomp and pageantry 
that attend them, as the vulgar Jews did 
upon their rites and ceremonies ; but, as the 



32S SERMON AT THE FUNERAL OF ^ 

wiser Israelites, who esteemed those glitter- 
ing formalities as the types and images of 
heavenly things, be quickened by them to the 
ambition of original honours and future glory. 
How much were it to be wished, that such 
persons especially would be followers of God 
and goodness, since, whether they will or not, 
other men will be followers of them. 

It is true, the temptations of great persons 
are more and greater than those of inferiors ; 
but then their abilities and understandings 
are ordinarily greater too ; and, if they lie 
more open to the assaults of the devil, they 
have generally greater sagacity to foresee the 
danger, and more powerful assistance to go 
through it. Nor is oiety inconsistent with 
greatness any more than it is with policy, but 
is the best foundation and security both to 
the one and the other. The breeding of 
Moses at court, without doubt, contributed 
much even to his religious performances, at 
least so far as to make them more useful and 
exemplary to others ; but then he was sin- 
cerely virtuous all the while, as well whilst 
reputed the son of Pharaoh's daughter as 
when Jethro's son-in-law. 

We find Christians in Caesar's household as 
soon as any where else in Rome ; and^ when 



JOHN EARL OF ROCHESTER. ^ 529 

Christianity had once gained Constantine, it 
spread itself farther over the empire in a few 
years than before it had done in some centu- 
ries. Since then so much good or mischief 
depends upon illustrious examples, will it not 
better become men to draw the multitude after 
them to heaven by their piety, than by infec- 
tious guilts be at the head of a miserable com- 
pany of the damned ? 

It is this piety, a timely and exemplary 
piety, that will perpetuate, to men of birth 
and fortunes, their honours, and their estates 
too, as well by deriving on them the blessing 
of God, who is the true fountain of honour, as 
by creating an awe and reverence for them 
from all orders of men, even to many genera- 
tions ; a reverence which will be fresh and 
lasting, when all the trophies of wit and 
gaiety are laid in the dust. It is this piety 
that will be the guide of their youth, and the 
comfort of their age ; for length of days is 
in her right hand, and in her left hand riches 
and honour. It is this, and this only, that 
can make all outward blessings comfortable, 
indeed blessings to us, by making them the 
steps and means of attaining the never-fading 
honours and incomprehensible glories of that 
kingdom which is above, where there shall 



330 SERMON AT THE FUNERAL. - 

be no sin^ nor sickness, nor pain, nor tears, 
nor death, but we shall rest from all our 
labours, and our works shall follow us : unto 
which God of his infinite mercy bring us, for 
the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our 
Saviour, to whom, with the Father and Holy 
Spirit, let us ascribe all praise and adoration, 
now and for ever. Amen ! 



1 



THE END. 



LONDON : 
fc U3 'O PRINTED BY S. AND K. BENTLEY, 
Dorset Stieet, Fleet Street. 



I 



